


Shadowborn

by RandomOneShot



Category: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Culture building for the Sheikah, Everything you can imagine happening while under the dictatorship of Ganondorf Dragmire, He does not take no for an answer, Link is uneducated, Mass Murder, Not stupid, Plague, Sheik is a grumpy magical ninja excorcist, So here's that backstory of those seven years no one in Hyrule likes to talk about, Starvation, The man has one-third of a magical nuke in his hand, World building for those things that we wonder about and Nintendo never gave us an answer on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7048594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomOneShot/pseuds/RandomOneShot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ordered by Zelda to assist Link whenever and however he can, Sheik of the Sheikah finds himself partnered to a hero of legend. </p><p>Except the hero is not quite a legend yet. The hero is a teenager with little to no idea of what he is doing, a fairy companion who seems to make it her life's mission to fray Sheik's temper and the ever looming knowledge that no one - absolutely no one - who has ever tried to bring down the Black King Ganondorf Dragmire has succeeded in the seven years that he has reigned. </p><p>No pressure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just A Kid 1 (Now)

His name is Link.

 

He is the Hero of Time.

 

If Hyrule is to be saved, he must succeed.

 

Those three things, a physical description seven years out of date and Her Highness’ stories of their meetings were all I knew about this ‘Link’. Hardly all the necessary information for a successful completion of the assignment. Sadly, there was not much more to be had. The Kokiri Forest was sealed away from the outside world by magic as old as Hyrule and no one would risk going there unless they had no regard for their own life or unless they were Sheik’ah under orders.

 

I had never been ordered to enter that place and so I remained nearly uninformed about this person, this Kokiri boy. It was disconcerting. My people had made his legend part of our duty for almost one thousand years, but we still knew so little. Now that he was finally here, I did not have more than a handful of facts about him. Information, that precious coin, was in such short supply. I was going to have to do this on my own; an unpleasant prospect.

 

It was night when the Hero came. Darkness had seeped into the desecrated town and hidden everything in black, which suited me perfectly as I never wanted any sort of confrontation taking place. There was, thankfully, nothing in the ruined town worth worrying about. Redeads and Poes are easily avoided. Lizalfoes, Stalfoes, Iron Knuckles, the human mercenaries he employed from time to time, Gerudo; those things were worth worrying about. The attention a clash could attract was worth worrying about. I was entering an area where the hammer of the Three was – quite literally – poised over my head.

 

I did not recognize the castle floating in the sky. That was… good. If he had kept it in its previous form, it would have been an even greater insult.

 

Dead things, twisted things, foul things, unclean things; they walked the streets and I slipped past them. Things that were once people lurked in the charred remains of what had once been the jewel of Hyrule. Did they remember what that place had looked like? I barely could.

 

So, he had stolen the castle and defiled the town. Why then did the Temple of Time stand inviolate and immaculate, hardly the worse for wear after seven years of neglect? Was it out of some twisted respect or reverence for the place where he had descended from the higher realm? Arrogance? I can believe that one, except it is not arrogance when it is the truth. The Black King thought himself a God King and no one had yet proved him wrong.

 

This one, this boy in green, would be the one to change that. So said Zelda Harkinian, my princess and master, and her foresight had never failed her yet.

 

The thought that this time might be that ominous ‘yet’ was calmly pushed away.

 

What will be, will be.

 

I entered the Temple of Time through the ruins of the market town and waited. I did not wait long. She had said it was the night and she was correct, as always. There was the static, hyper charged sensation of lightning about to strike and something like sunlight began gleaming down from the ceiling. There was no sun out, however, and even if there had been, it had not shined on that damned town for years.

 

It brightened, quickly becoming cuttingly intense and I shut my eyes. There was a knife in my hand, the end result of old habits. It amounted to nothing though. The light lasted for five beats of my heart and then faded as quickly as it came. When the light disappeared and I could look safely, there was a man standing on the dais of the Master Sword.

 

The Hero of Time.

 

Green tunic, red-gold hair, blue eyes and, after a moment, a small ball of white light drifted out from beneath his cap to hover in his personal space; that was Navi, the forest fairy.

 

So, it was he.

 

I was…

 

…I cannot find the words. How do you describe meeting a legend? Seeing for yourself that they are flesh and bone and blood?

 

He was no mythic figure, which is certainly the truth. The light faded, that searingly bright blue-white rushing vortex that had dropped him from the Sacred Realm, and what stepped out of the Goddesses’ domain was a very mortal man. His first action after returning to the mortal world from a seven year absence was to look around wildly, stretching his gaze even up the high ceiling of the temple. Confusion was drawn all over his features.

 

It occurred to me just then that perhaps he no idea what had transpired. Perhaps he had lain hands on the blade as a child and then, suddenly, there he stood a man. Perhaps he would walk out of the temple and not understand why everything was bleak and dead. Perhaps he thought he had just only now entered the Sacred Realm and would set off in search of the Triforce.

 

But no; he did know what had happened, if only in the barest sense. I knew this the moment the fairy flew up from his head and spoke, “Link… we’re back in the Temple of Time. But have seven years really passed?”

 

Oh yes, small lady. They truly have.

 

He pulled something out from his pockets. His hand obscured it for a moment, but then I saw the object clearly. The Hero was holding a small slingshot, the kind that children play with. For a moment, I wondered why he had such a thing, but then I realized he must have carried it with him seven years earlier. As I saw it, the same hand that had likely fit perfectly around the slingshot’s grip when he last pulled it out now made it appear weak and fragile.  

 

His face gazed at the slingshot with blank incomprehension.

 

He seemed to be thinking, ‘ _how could this be?’_

 

Hero, you have slept long.

 

The fairy seemed to take it as hard as he did. “It looks like you won’t be able to use some of the weapons you found as a kid anymore.…”

 

He had used it as a weapon? That was mildly impressive, something a Sheik’ah would do - turn an innocuous toy into an instrument of death.

 

He stared at it for a few moments longer and then slowly put it away. “Yeah, I guess not,” he agreed.

 

His voice was not a man’s, but it was not a boy’s either. It was not the high pitched sound of a child, but had not yet fully deepened. Why had I expected otherwise?

 

The fairy moved, quick and skittish, circling around the Hero’s head twice before coming to a stop in front of his face.

 

“Let’s get out of here!”

 

I could not find fault with her for sounding upset. Because of who and what I am, I have never enjoyed setting foot in any temple or shrine to the Three even before the Black King rose to power. Now, seven years after that day, the Temple of Time had gained an ominous undertone to its serenity and seemed to house the proverbial calm before the storm. Whether it was the lack of light through the windows or the utter silence from outside, save the howling of the wind, the temple had become almost frightening to those two. Even I was feeling more disquieted within its halls and I have seen nightmares walking the world in flesh.

 

So, no, I did not blame them for wishing to leave.

 

What I _did_ find fault for, what I found to be almost disgusting, was the fact that neither of them had taken the slightest notice of my presence.

 

It was unfair of me to expect it from the Hero, maybe, but that fairy should have been able to sense my presence, even if she could not actually see me. Had seven years been enough to rattle her wits? The eyes of a Sheik’ah can manipulate the mundane beings of this world easily enough, but one of the Fae should not be so oblivious and not _that_ Fae in particular. Her negligence could cost the Hero his life and that was unforgivable.

 

So I stepped out from the shadows behind the pedestal and dropped all pretence of stealth, something I actually had to work for. To allow the sound of my boots hitting the floor, to allow the rasp of leather and cloth as I moved, to sheath the knife I had drawn not a minute before and present myself in plain sight to these strangers, who I could have killed a dozen times over, as someone who meant no harm; these things went against my grain and it near lifted the hair off my neck.

 

I will not give him any credit for realizing I was there _after_ I allowed him to. Anyone would have heard my footsteps and any warrior with decent instincts would have sensed my presence. Even then, when I came to a stop before the pedestal, there was a moment when he hesitated. No doubt he was running through his options, but even that was too slow, too trusting. If I had been anyone else, any _thing_ else, I would not have given him that courtesy. If he did not understand that, I would have to teach him very quickly.

 

A heartbeat passed with him standing frozen, his back to me. The crest of the Hyrulian royal family, laid atop the steel of his shield, nearly glowed in the dark. It had been polished recently, but by who? Certainly not him.

 

Then the tense peace shattered and he drew the Master Sword.

 

In spite of his confusion, in spite of his weakness born from seven years of atrophy, there was a moment when he held the Sword of Evil’s Bane straight and unflinching at my face.

 

And I knew fear.

 

The man I had seen was gone and in his place was a warrior, like me, but so very different.

 

Then his arm shook, the blade’s point swayed off center, and he collapsed on one knee. His shield, which he had slung onto his right arm with the same blinding speed that he used to draw the Master Sword, was nearly dragging him to the floor. The blade itself was no better. He was holding onto the hilt as tightly as he could, I saw that clearly, but he literally _could not_ bring it to bear on me, even on the floor as he was.

 

“Link?!”

 

The fairy was whirling around his shoulders, frantically calling his name. The Hero himself was still staring at me, but the blank look of do-or-die had faded from his face and now he was simply terrified. His breath came in great, heaving gasps and I saw his cheeks staining themselves bright red. He was trembling, but not with fear.

 

Not a minute after leaving the Sacred Realm and he was already exhausted.

 

I recall thinking, there are no words for this, but pathetic.

 

“I have been waiting for you, Hero of Time….”

 

Looking back, I can now see how that may have been misconstrued as malevolence. Had I taken a moment to think about things from their point of view, I confess that having a stranger step out of seemingly nowhere and say that he had been waiting for me would not be a quick way to gain my trust.

 

“’When evil rules all, an awakening voice from the Sacred Realm will call those destined to be Sages, who dwell in the five temples. One in a deep forest; one on a high mountain; one under a vast lake; one within the house of the dead; one within a goddess of the sand. Together with the Hero of Time, the awakened ones will bind the evil and return the light of peace to the land….’”

 

Those words had been drilled into me, along with many others, as a part of my heritage and duty. In many ways, they were as much a part of me as the armor and weapons I carried.

 

So too, perhaps, was the young man in front of me.

 

“This is the legend of the temples passed down by my people, the Sheik’ah.”

 

And just like that, I had done the unthinkable and tossed away the last shreds of secrecy that guarded my identity. I had just met him and already he was making me break tradition after tradition, habit after habit.

 

If I had known then that it was only the beginning of such tendencies, I do believe I would have wanted to vomit.

 

“I am Sheik, a survivor of the Sheik’ah. I have been ordered to help you awaken the Sages.”

 

“You… you’re like Impa?” the Hero panted.

 

“Yes. She is a part of my tribe,” I responded.

 

“Le… Lemme see your eyes,” he forced out.

 

Was he truly that out of breath? Our impossible task had just risen a bit higher.

 

Even in the unearthly light that always seemed to shine around the pedestal, my cowl and hair still hid most of my face. I stepped forward two paces and knelt to be even with his face.

 

We are the Sheik’ah, the Shadow Folk. Even in our prime, when we numbered in the hundreds, we took care to remain hidden. Few knew we existed for certain, even less knew anything about us.

 

But through rumor and legend, everyone knew about our eyes.

 

He stared at them for four seconds – too long – and then looked away, his muscles finally relaxing.

 

“Okay. You’re Sheik. So….” He looked up at me again and he seemed to be smaller, somehow.

 

“What now?”

 

I blinked, feeling confused. “Now we leave. You did not expect to stay here, did you?”

 

“Well, no, but,” the Hero laughed uncomfortably and gestured around. “I’m not… feeling too great right now. I’m not sure I can walk very far.”

 

“You must,” I said simply.

 

I stood up and pulled him up along with me. His knees would not lock and he fell on top of me. Reflex, that old friend, kicked in hard and I had a knife in my left hand just as I braced him with my right.

 

That was twice now that this young man had made me draw a knife without actually presenting me with a threat. It was getting rather irritating.

 

“Stretch your legs,” I said. “Walk slowly until you have the feel of them, but do not fall. We must leave immediately.”

 

“Why? What’s wrong?” the fairy asked.

 

I began walking towards the doors, towing the Hero behind me with one hand.

 

“Ganondorf is practically on top of us. Even on the slight chance that his creatures missed your arrival, he most certainly would not. Someone or something will be coming to examine what happened soon and we must not be here when they arrive.”

 

“What?!” the fairy yelled. Her small, glowing body zoomed down and began darting and weaving around the Hero as she shouted encouragement and orders.

 

“Link, come on! Move it! We gotta go right now!”

 

“Navi, I heard him and I’m trying my best!” The Hero snapped back.

 

If that was his best, then I was going to have a serious problem getting him out of the market town. We were moving nearly at a crawl and behind me I could feel him swaying back and forth with each step. It would not do. We had to move faster.

 

I stepped back and slid my shoulders beneath the arm of the hand I held. The Hero blinked incomprehensibly at me and then yelped when I stepped forward, dragging him with me.

 

“Move your legs,” I said when he nearly dragged us both down to the floor with his immobility.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

 

“Moving you as best I can,” I snapped, finally beginning to lose my patience. “We need to leave _now_ and you are taking too long.”

 

Mercifully, he did not protest further and began shuffling his legs as best he could to match my pace. We were still moving at a turtle’s pace as we exited the Temple of Time and stepped out into the night.

 

That was the one moment when he froze utterly and became a living statue. He stopped breathing for a moment – with his chest pressed against mine, I could feel the very beating of his heart – and something like a whine gurgled out of his mouth. His eyes, vacant like a scared child’s, locked onto mine.

 

“What is this?” the Hero moaned.

 

“ _Move_ ,” I ordered. When his legs stayed still, I pressed forward anyway. Half led and half carried, he had no choice but to follow me.

 

“What is this?” the Hero asked again, his voice louder. “This isn’t the town, is it?”

 

“Be silent,” I replied. “Noise draws attention.”

 

There was nothing waiting for us in temple’s gardens. That only made my tension rise. We reached the fence that surrounded the grounds and it rose further. A hole had been ripped across our reality, such as our world had not seen in seven years. Anyone and anything with the slightest arcane sense would have felt it across the entire continent, perhaps even further, and yet nothing had appeared to bar our way. One of the bearers of the Triforce, the essence of the Goddesses, was not ten miles from our position and yet he did not come. The elders say _death comes from the shadows behind_ , but that was not Ganondorf’s way. He destroyed anything that crossed him with the brute force of a storm, but no such disaster had befallen us by the time I boosted the Hero over the temple fence and vaulted after him. It was as though no one and nothing had sensed anything amiss, which of course meant something was deeply wrong.

 

My original plan had been to take the Hero through the market square itself. It was the fastest way out of the town and the wide open space would allow for better fighting when the inevitable horde descended on us. His condition upon emerging from the Sacred Realm and the disturbing lack of a horde changed that. He clearly was not in any condition to fight or sprint, which ruled out the market square. Even on the best of days, there were Redeads waiting to paralyze and devour the unwary. I could not count on the Hero being able to evade their gaze and grip when he could not so much as walk without staggering from side to side like a drunkard. Additionally, the feeling of a trap slowly closing around my neck made me want the small, shadowed back alleys of the town; those were conditions that I favored, things that would make it easier to protect the Hero or escape our foes, if need be.

 

We crept through those alleys, the Hero, the fairy and I, treating every small rustle as though an army were about to burst from the shadows. The fairy was, at first, a concern to me. Her bright light would draw the gaze of many potential threats, but that in itself was soon turned to our advantage. I asked her to fly ahead of us, lighting the way and drawing out any threats. By some miracle, nothing truly dangerous crossed our path. Two Redeads and a Poe were all that we saw that night, and only the second Redead forced a confrontation. Before that, we found ways of bypassing the threats while the fairy made a lure of herself, bobbing ahead of them to keep their attention. The Redead we could not evade I eliminated from afar and waited to see if anything would crawl free from the darkness to eat its flesh. Nothing did. Not long after that, we reached the town walls.

 

The cobblestones of the street had been torn up around the gutter years before, probably by one of my own, to form a quick entrance to the sewer system beneath. The tunnels were smaller than I was tall, forcing me to hunch over as I walked. The Hero, who was taller than I, was even worse off. He was forced to keep both hands on either side of the tunnel for balance as he shuffled behind me, both of us following the fairy’s light as she floated towards the dimly lit circle that marked the area where the tunnel opened into a drainage ditch. Slime, mud formed over a period of years and stagnant water splashed around our feet as we went. The bars that had once blocked the mouth of the tunnel had been filed off, very likely by the same enterprising individual who had made that rough opening into the sewer. I did not know for sure who had done it, but I was thankful that they had informed Impa of its existence. Had I not had a vague remembrance of her words regarding that particular passage into and out of the town, leaving with the Hero would likely have been much more difficult.

 

I dropped out of the tunnel and slid down to the moat that had once surrounded the south end of Castle Town with clean water. By the time the Hero fell into it, the waters were fouled and barely moving. Scum coated the top of the water and a vile stench filled the air. I knew that Ganondorf sometimes threw the bones and flesh of those he killed over the walls of the town and, doubtless, I was swimming over those remains as they rotted beneath my feet.

 

Behind me, the Hero was flailing and gagging pitifully every other second. The fairy was bobbing gently in front of him, whispering encouragement to his ears. It was only the work of a few short strokes to reach the other end of the moat for me. One heave and I was out of the stagnant water, dripping onto the dried, dead grass that sprouted as far as the eye could see. Turning to check on the progress of my charge, I found him only halfway across the water. His movements were weak and slow; his mouth and nose dipped beneath the surface often as he failed to keep his head up.

 

Pathetic.

 

He managed a few more dismal strokes and those, thankfully, brought him within my grabbing range. I seized his wrist and pulled, hauling him halfway out of the water and no further. Between his waterlogged clothes and his weapons, he was too heavy to lift without use of my legs. As he sputtered like a fish (not an inappropriate thought, as I had yanked him out of the water like one), I gathered my legs beneath me and grabbed hold of the bandolier holding the Master Sword to his back. Then I _pulled_.

 

This time, he left the water entirely, dirty liquid coming in streams from every inch of him. If I smelled as terrible as he, any trackers sent after us would be able to follow our trail, even were they blind and deaf. And he just lay there; the Hero of Time, our prophesized savior, shaking and groaning like a newborn horse who has tried to walk for the first time.

 

Something was waking in me, something sharp and hot. It centered in my gut and spread like sap to my arms, my legs, my fingers, my toes; I itched to do something, though I did not know what.

 

“Get up,” I said. No, ordered.

 

He groaned and rolled over onto his belly. His arms and legs shuffled feebly, but he did not rise.

 

“Get. _Up_ ,” I repeated, a razor edge added to my voice. At the time, I did not recall ever speaking like that, ever feeling like that, before in my life. Looking back now, I know different. But then, don’t we all try to forget the things that we do not like?

 

“I can’t,” the Hero moaned.

 

Something in me twisted and I was hauling him up by the back of his tunic before he could protest. He leaned against me like an uprooted tree; all weight and no balance. The fairy buzzed agitatedly in front of us, her glow ruining my night sight and her ramblings helping no one.

 

“Be silent,” I said. “If you want to help, then ensure we are not walking into a trap. We cannot stay here and it will be a long walk before we reach our destination.”

 

The fairy hovered in front of me for a long moment and then flittered away. Unkind mutterings trailed in her wake, most of the holding the words ‘Sheikah’ and ‘jerk’.

 

Floating fool, I thought. I neither need nor want your good opinion.

 

I placed one foot forward and dragged the Hero along with me. And another. And another. After thirty yards, he seemed to find his second wind (such as it was) and began stumbling along as best he could to lighten his burden on me. Each step brought us further from the battered walls of Castle Town and closer to the rocky hills that lay between it and Kakariko Village.

 

Those hills wrapped around the north, east and most of the west of Castle Town. They were nearly impossible to navigate on foot and, at the time, they were our best bet towards reaching Kakariko without notice. My tribe had been using them for centuries, long before Ganondorf was even born, and although I knew he had sent Gerudo scouts to investigate and navigate the hills in the years since his takeover, I also knew that they had not one-tenth the understanding of them as I did. As barren as they were, monsters would find no sustenance and would surely starve. It was only the undead that we had to fear within them.

 

Beside me, the Hero huffed with each breath and weighed heavily on my shoulder. The thought that he would collapse before we arrived crossed my mind and I discarded it. I would drag him if need be. This boy, whatever I thought of him, was the one who could kill Ganondorf and end his reign. If he was weak now, I would simply have to make him strong.

 

And once we arrived at my hiding place, it would be as good of a time as any to start.


	2. Just A Kid 2 (Now)

Getting to the nearest bolt-hole took nearly the entire night. The journey that had taken me three hours earlier in the day took more than twice that with the Hero slowing me down. He did collapse, as it turned out; seven times total. The last four happened very close together and I do believe he would have fallen more often had I not stayed nearby to grab him occasionally when we traversed steep paths.

 

When we finally arrived at the slit in the rock of the cliffs that I intended for us to rest in, he let out a sound that I can only call “Hoo _waugh_!” and fell more than walked in. The cave that the slit opened up into was small – barely the size of a kennel – but it had food, blankets and water, which made it perfect for us.

 

I did a quick check of the cavern and found that the tripwire over the entrance had not been broken, nor had the sand scattered over the ground been disturbed by any feet but my own. We were undiscovered, for the time being.

 

Behind me, the Hero lay panting on the floor. The fairy was bobbing gently around his head, frantic queries about his health falling from her mouth over and over. I do not know why she bothered. It was apparent to anyone that the Hero was exhausted.

 

Perfect.

 

“We’ll be staying here for the foreseeable future. Draw your blade,” said I.

 

The Hero groaned and turned his head out of the ground to squint up at me.

 

“What do you -”

 

My dagger struck only an inch from his nose.

 

The Hero squawked and rolled frantically to the side. The entrance was not very wide, however, and he was stopped by the rock. I made the act of drawing my second dagger a very visible one. Thankfully, the Hero was not a complete fool and got the message. Awkward and pathetic as he looked, he did manage to get to his feet and draw the Master Sword.

 

The shield remained on his back. I do not think he had the strength to wield both it and the blade. Certainly, the blade was wavering even with both of his hands wrapped around the hilt.

 

I advanced.

 

The Hero retreated swiftly, returning to the small canyon we had entered from. The moon was full and fat, giving me all the light I needed. His face and body were both filthy, and he was on the edge of collapse. I could smell the reek of him, both sweat and fear.

 

Now, how well could he fight when he was in such a state?

 

I feinted left, right, and then struck. To his credit, he did not fall for either of the feints. The ease with which I got past his guard was shocking, though. He only began swinging the blade toward me when I was a foot away from him and I had wrapped my free hand around one of his wrists before he was even close to hurting me. Keeping with my forward momentum, I flipped my dagger around and rammed the hilt into his gut. As he coughed up his air and more than a little stomach acid, I pulled on the wrist I had captured, half turned my body to brace against his and pushed the hilt in deeper. With both the pull on his wrist and the push on his gut, it was the work of a second to have him off the ground, flipping through the air and slamming into the dirt.

 

Dead, I thought.

 

“Get up and try again,” said I, flipping the dagger back around to have the point presented first.

 

He tried to answer and succeeded only in beginning another coughing fit. Bile and saliva flew up from his mouth, splattering onto the ground and my boots. I felt my irritation rise and shoved it away into the Void. There was peace again.

 

“If you cannot fight me off, I will hurt you,” I warned. “Better that you learn this now and from me.”

 

“Learn _what?!”_ the Hero howled, and then he rolled away from my boot as it stomped down hard where his head had been.

 

“That you must fight when you are threatened, no matter what your circumstances are.”

 

He was on his feet again, reeling, but upright. The Master Sword was nothing but dead weight in his hands. I charged and he lashed it at my face. I swayed to the side and it missed.

 

This is ridiculous, I thought. He is not even trying. I can read his movements like a book.

 

The next step was even worse. His strike had left him overextended and he could not pull back to swing at me again. I darted in, kicked one leg out from under him, and had him on his knees with my knife beneath his chin before two seconds had passed.

 

Dead again.

 

“Stand,” I ordered and stepped back once more.

 

A tiny ball of light bashed me over the back of my head.

 

“What are you doing?!” the fairy screamed. “You’re going to kill him!”

 

“I’m trying to do the opposite,” I replied.

 

“I can’t fight now,” said the Hero, still kneeling in the dirt. “I’m sorry, I _can’t_ –“

 

I attacked.

 

He did not even manage to get to his feet. He simply toppled over to avoid my dagger and then lay there, panting.

 

“Get up,” said I.

 

“I can’t,” he replied.

 

I kicked him in the chest.

 

“ _Stop!”_ the fairy yelled as she charged. I swatted her out of the air and the Master Sword nearly cleaved my left feet straight down the middle.

 

The Hero was still kneeling, but he had managed to lunge forward on three limbs and use the fourth to attack me. Such a terrible strategy. My next kick caught him on the chin and he fell flat on his back, the Master Sword finally leaving his grip.

 

The fairy flew around to hover at his nose, sending frantic inquiries to the Hero. He did not answer one of them. He just lay there, staring up at the sky and heaving for breath.

 

I hefted the dagger in my hand, debated the odds of another assault giving me the reaction I desired, and found them wanting. The dagger was sheathed. I walked over to the Hero and knelt down by his head. The fairy buzzed angrily at me, but a warning look sent her back to sullen silence.

 

“I can’t….” the Hero said quietly, thickly. “I… I know that I’ll have to… fight when I’m tired, but… sometimes I just don’t have anything else. I _know_ how to fight when… I’m tired or sick or hurt… but I can’t… I can’t right now. I’m tired and I’m confused and I’m weak and I’m scared, so _stop hurting me._ ”

 

He was crying. The sounds he was making degenerated from words to whines and moans, and tears began leaking form his eyes as his face twisted up. He stopped trying to talk to me and simply cried. Whether it was the shield on his back or his own exhaustion that kept him from rolling over to avoid facing me, I do not know, but it was obvious that he wanted to.

 

As for myself, I had seen enough and I did not like what I had seen.

 

The Hero of Time, the one who was chosen to wield the greatest weapon against evil in all recorded history, was a mentally immature weakling.

 

I collected the dagger and walked into the cave to change into clean clothes and eat something. I fed my steady stream of wrath into the Void, putting it where I could not be affected by it.

 

We are all going to die, I thought.

 

* * *

  

Eventually, the Hero did drag himself, literally, back into the cave. When he managed to get over his aversion of being within ten feet of me, he seized the spare clothes I had readied for him and stripped down to get out of his wet tunic and underthings. When he did, I noticed the amount of cuts and contusions that littered his body. I could not say how many were from me and how many were from our journey here, but it did not matter. All would likely cause problems unless taken care of immediately.

 

I had some medicine that could help with that. Among the supplies left behind in the bolt-hole were three red potions. A swallow of one would fix all his injuries and leave him as though he had never suffered them at all. The problem with that, though….

 

I lifted one to my eyes and considered.

 

Magic of any kind was becoming rarer and rarer since Ganondorf had taken up his stolen throne. Aside from the Hyrule Royal Army, the mages of the kingdom were the quickest to die. From a tactical point of view, it ordinarily made sense: one decent battle-mage could equal or surpass an entire squad of soldiers for sheer destructive power; healers could undo the bloody work of his Gerudo soldiers and monsters so long as a spark of life remained within their patient; illusionists could hide whole families or villages from his gaze; seers could forewarn others of his movements.

 

But this was Ganondorf and as I said, it only _ordinarily_ made sense.

 

With the Triforce of Power, he was the better of any battle-mage Hyrule had ever taught.

 

With the Triforce of Power, he could force through any illusion the moment he noticed it.

 

With the Triforce of Power, he was a blind spot in the sight of the seers.

 

Ganondorf Dragmire spent the first year of his bloody rule doing two things: the first was searching high and low for Her Highness, Princess Zelda Harkinian the Second. The second was to begin a campaign of treachery and terror against every single magic user that called Hyrule home, from the lowest hedge-witch to the Magister of the Academia Arcana.

 

He did the first because he needed to.

 

He did the second because he wanted to.

 

There was no one, save maybe the holders of the other two Triforce pieces, who could have stood against him with a hope of victory. The mages did not know this. In the first year of the war, over two hundred gathered with the shattered remnants of the Royal Army and marched on the castle. They sought to drive back the Gerudo soldiers that had followed Ganondorf from the desert, send his creatures howling back to the blackness that spawned them, and wrest the false king from his stolen throne.

 

And in all three tasks, they failed.

 

No army met them at the gates. No opposition did they face at any time. They walked over the drawbridge, still lowered from the exodus of the townspeople, and right up to the castle without seeing a single soul. They gathered tightly into battle formation, more confused than afraid, and called for Ganondorf to surrender.

 

From the highest tower, there was a bright flash of light.

 

Then that entire company was incinerated.

 

It was nearly instantaneous, but those within the light had time to feel the agony of what they were being subjected to. I know this because Grei, the Sheik’ah who had been assigned to see if the mad venture actually succeeded, was watching from the lower road the whole time, out of sight. He was very insistent that they had all screamed shortly before the light ended and a vast pile of ash was left where those people had stood.

 

Grei quite sensibly left soon after.

 

It was not long after that that the message began to spread. From every refugee of whatever village the Gerudo and the monsters (though many were beginning to see them as one in the same) felt like raiding that day came a message:

 

_‘A week’s worth of food for every sorcerer turned in to the King’s people.’_

 

It seemed silly at first. Ganondorf was a tyrant and a regicide. Everyone loathed him, even those who feared him. Who would turn in one of their own for food?

 

And then the famine hit.

 

So many villages annihilated. So many farms burned to ash. What was not destroyed was more often than not taken by the Gerudo. No one had any food they could share; few had food they could sell, and those prices soon began to grow. Weeks passed. Months passed. Suddenly, past relationships were not as important as present survival.

 

The healers made it out of the ordeal best. Even the most desperately starving fool remembers that he can live through starvation only to be injured or take ill, it seems. But the others who remained and specialized in other areas did not fare so well. Battle-mages were dangerous, after all. No one wanted to be seen as stirring up trouble by harboring a potential threat to the Black King. Illusionists and enchanters, seers and summoners; they were all deemed bounties, waiting to be reaped.

 

Some were taken in the night, betrayed by those they trusted. Others were killed and their heads taken as proof. Many simply fled or hid, forsaking all their knowledge and seeking a new life among unfamiliar faces that would never learn what they had been.

 

Texts that had instructed arcane students were burned. Printing new copies was deemed a crime punishable by drawing and quartering. Viewing of this event was mandatory for all residents of whatever village the lawbreaker lived in.

 

By the second year of Ganondorf’s reign, there was not a soul alive who would admit to being a mage even to douse a fire burning their house down while they were inside it. Even the healers, though they had fared best of the lot, withdrew and hid, hoping to be forgotten. While their neighbors choked on blood and mucus during the consumption epidemic three years later, they remembered and did nothing. Even as I looked at that bottle, when both famine and epidemic had ended, they were still hiding.

 

Ganondorf had broken the mages of Hyrule, had made them fear their own countrymen, and he had not done this to protect his own people from them, or to prevent another uprising against him. He did not care for his own people. He did not fear any mage.

 

He had done it because they had challenged him, because they had told him _no_ and even their utter defeat at his gates could not assuage his wrathful, wounded pride.

 

…My apologies. I shall refrain from going off tangent in the future.

 

What I meant to say was that obtaining any form of magical medicine was very difficult. As I knew the Hero’s various injuries were not life threatening, I could not help but wonder whether it would be better to use ordinary salves and time to heal them, rather than one of our few red potions.

 

Sadly, I had been too long in contemplation and the fairy noticed what I was holding.

 

“Hey, give that here!”

 

I was rapidly growing to dislike her voice.

 

Though my experience with her at that point was small, it still told me that if I did not give the Hero the red potion, my ears would be regretting it for a long time. I was tired then and very much desired a decent six hours of sleep. I walked over to the Hero and broke the wax seal on the bottle.

 

“Drink some of this,” said I.

 

“Now you care,” muttered the Hero, and he downed half the bottle in one long gulp before I could pull it away.

 

“ _Some._ All you have are scratches and those heal with very little. Save the rest for later.”

 

“We’re doing this _again?!_ ” The idea seemed to give him a fit.

 

I felt my eyes narrow and it was an effort not to send him to sleep right then and there. “You have just emerged from a seven year long slumber and your body is incredibly weak. One night’s walking and you are fit to collapse. This must be remedied or you will not last long once we get started.”

 

“Beating him up won’t change anything. Why’d you do that, anyway?” asked the fairy belligerently.

 

“As I said previously, I needed to see how well he would fight when he was tired,” I responded. “And _he_ needs to learn that he must be ready to defend himself from anything, everywhere, at any time. He is of no use to anyone if he dies.”

 

“And _I_ told you,” spat the Hero. He looked much recovered from earlier, having felt the effects of the medicine. “That I wouldn’t be able to fight you like that. I know what my limits are and I’d gone past them when you started trying to cut my head off!”

 

I had done no such thing. Severing limbs from a moving target was always difficult with short blades like mine.

 

“And then you didn’t stop when I asked you to and you didn’t stop when Navi asked you to and then you swatted her out of the air and you _suck_ as a guide, do you know that?! I have no idea where we are!” yelled the Hero as he finished his little speech.

 

“We are in the canyons to the north of Hyrule castle town. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

 

“ _Why are you being such a jerk_?!”

 

I confess I did derive some pleasure from seeing him like that.

 

“I am being no such thing. I am under orders from Princess Zelda to keep you alive and part of that means being absolutely certain that you can fight off whatever threats happen to appear. As we have just seen, you are currently very weak. So, tomorrow, and for as long as necessary after that, we are going to stay here in this canyon and work on your combat skills.”

 

“My what?” He honestly looked baffled.

 

My mind drew a blank momentarily before I realized that, being of a race that was essentially composed of none but children, a higher vocabulary was not likely something he had.

 

I foresaw many moments like that one in my future.

 

“Your fighting skills, Hero,” said I.

 

“Oh, that. I can already fight fine, I just need to rest some,” said the Hero.

 

I took a deep breath in, held it, and let it out. He was a Kokiri. He had never had the education I had. He did not know any better. It was my job to teach him everything I could.

 

And if he failed to get it right the first time, _then_ I could start punching him. It would be reinforcement at that point.

 

“Hero,” said I, ignoring the “My name is _Link!_ ” that followed my words. “While your body was cared for during the last seven years, such care did not extend to proper exercise. Do you not remember how heavy the Master Sword was when you first pulled it out and held it at me in the Temple of Time? You had not yet trekked across Hyrule Field then and yet you were still too weak to hold it for more than a few moments. Do you understand what that means? _You cannot hold your own weapon_.”

 

The Hero turned his head and stared at the blade that he had dropped to the ground upon returning to the cave. He had not even bothered to sheathe it and it lay gleaming dully in the darkness of the cave. While I was fairly sure that nothing had followed us from the town, it would have been tempting fate to light a fire. As for the undead, my people had long ago warded this place from their gaze.

 

“I can lift it up,” said the Hero. His tone was not very confident.

 

“For how long?” I countered. He said nothing and I pressed harder.

 

“Could you hold it up for long minutes, swinging it up and down, left and right, again and again, in tandem with a shield strapped to your other arm; a shield which is a whole other weight to carry? Could you draw it to fight after sprinting a full mile in armor? Could you hold it after hours and hours of battle, with yet more to come? As you are now, could you?”

 

The Hero still stared at the blade, unspeaking, unmoving. The fairy drifted in front of his face, murmuring his name, but he ignored her. His hands came up to wrap around his upper arms, his long fingers digging into his soft flesh. There was no muscle beneath them.

 

“Well?” I asked. My word had no malice in it.

 

His hands dropped away and came to rest on the ground. His eyes traveled over the sword, to his shield, to the bag with his meager supplies spilling from the lip. The slingshot that had looked so small in his hand had nearly slipped entirely out. Its rubber string was coiled on the ground like a small white snake.

 

He blinked and something seemed to pass over his face, leaving it somehow blanker.

 

“No, I couldn’t,” admitted the Hero. “If I wasn’t tired, maybe I could fight for a minute or two, but then I’d be ready to drop. And then I’d die.”

 

So, he could listen to reason. How happy for us both.

 

“Correct,” I responded. “So, until you can fight to my satisfaction, you and I are going to be sparring each day -”

 

“Sparring?” interrupted the Hero.

 

“It means to mock-fight, to practice for battles to come. Do not interrupt me again. As I said, we are going to spar everyday and I will spend our nights telling you what you have missed over the last few years. We will not leave this canyon until you have met my requirements for both physical and mental criteria, so –”

 

“Criteria? Oh, sorry.”

 

“Standards, Hero, it means standards. So, do not try to convince me otherwise. Understand?”

 

“I told you to stop calling me Hero,” said the Hero, frowning.

 

“And I told you to never interrupt me again. Go to sleep now.”

 

Ignoring the mutterings of both boy and fairy was easy enough. I had gone to sleep under much more unpleasant atmospheres. The tiny bedrolls stored in the bolt-hole did nothing to cushion the pebble covered ground, but I was too tired to care. The night had been one frustration after another and I wanted nothing more than to regain my patience with six hours of uninterrupted rest.

 

I breathed in, out, in, out, and slept.


	3. Just A Kid 3 (Now)

Before I begin the details of my time with the Hero again, allow me a few words on my training methods.

 

Here is the first thing to know – they are what many would call brutal.

 

I am not so proud as to say that I did not derive some pleasure in seeing the Hero struggle so in his training – in those days there were many moments when I simply hated him, I admit – but from the very beginning, the sole purpose of those lessons was to see him gain the skills necessary to complete his mission and survive. If the choice came down to those two, it would be in that order. So long as the Master Sword found its way into Ganondorf’s heart, the Hero could have dropped dead the moment after and I would not have cared one jot. His whole existence was the end of Ganondorf’s own and beyond that, he was nothing to me. However, while Ganondorf yet lived, the Hero was everything to me. Only Her Highness was of more importance.

 

His fighting style was not my own. Although I had learned the basics of sword and shield as a child, it had been years since I had held either. Despite this, I recalled enough of my lessons to be faintly nauseated by what I saw. The Hero slashed with his sword like it was a cleaver or an axe. He used his Hylian shield as the fortress uses its gate – to simply block an attack over and over again until it is crumpled to nothing. Of footwork and breath control, parrying and deflecting, he knew nothing.

 

So I naturally taught him everything I could and did everything I could to make those lessons stick.

 

As my own childhood had taught me, pain was an exceptional motivator.

 

* * *

 

 

The sun rose and I rose with it.

 

We had slept for some six hours and the sun was turning the dark sky a pale pink as I left the shelter of the bolt-hole to look outside. It would be some hours yet before the sun was high enough to fully illuminate the canyon and its high walls, but even weak light like that was unbearable to the restless dead. So long as nothing living stumbled over our sanctuary, we would be safe until nightfall at least.

 

So, to business.

 

Rousing the Hero proved easy enough. One sharp word sent him scrambling in the dirt for a weapon, his eyes snapping open, but seeing nothing.

 

It was the fairy who brought him to true wakefulness, calling his name loudly and freezing him in place. Then he blinked and sanity returned to his eyes.

 

“Navi, was I having a nightmare again?” the Hero asked sleepily.

 

“No, it’s just time to get up,” the fairy responded. Then, in a bitter mutter, “Apparently.”

 

“We have slept long enough,” said I. “If you truly wish to return to slumber, then finish your activities today that much sooner. Now, rise and eat. We have much to do.”

 

He took no offense at our breakfast, which was just as well. If he had complained over something as insignificant as a meal of flatbread and smoked meat, I may have truly punched him, hot as my banked temper was burning. As it was, he simply made an ‘hm’ sound and bit into his food. The entire meal was devoured within a minute. I am not sure if he chewed at all.

 

Actually, now that I recall it, I do not remember him opening his mouth either. The food was in his hands and then it was gone.

 

Odd.

 

“So, what is it that we’re doing today?” the Hero finally asked, after consigning the food I had given him to some nameless, unending void.

 

“An evaluation, followed by the beginning of your training.”

 

“…A what?”

 

“Evaluation. It means I want to see what you can already do.”

 

“Oh,” the Hero said. He reached for the Master Sword and his Hylian shield, dragging them across the dirt to guide them to his back. When he had settled his equipment he stood, then suddenly swayed. His hand reached out quickly and latched onto the cave wall. The fairy drifted down in front of his face.

 

“Link?”

 

“I… just… got really… dizzy, all of a sudden,” the Hero panted.

 

“Are you going to faint?” I asked.

 

“No, I think I’m – “

 

I cut him off sharply. “Then no more delays,” I said and grabbed his other hand as I rose. The Hero gave me one wild-eyed look before I dragged him away from the support of the wall and into the growing sunlight. Behind me, the fairy shrieked in outrage. I ignored her.

 

The Hero had not traveled more than twenty feet when I let him go, but he was panting heavily already. That did not bode well for me. Or him, either.

 

“Attack me,” I ordered. I was beginning to see that giving him time to worry or complain would be best avoided. As it turned out though, I did not have to give that much concern. The Hero lunged at me the moment I spoke the words. It was an animal’s attack, all screaming and fists, but it was still an attack. Apparently I was not the only one growing frustrated.

 

Initiative – pass.

 

The surprise of the assault caught me off guard – something I vowed then and there would _never_ happen again – but I still had enough time to side-step and trip the Hero with my foot. He fell, but rolled with the direction of movement and came up again easily. As he did, his left hand came up and wrapped around the Master Sword. It came halfway out of the sheath before he froze, becoming utterly still and looking as though someone had just punched him in the gut.

 

“I didn’t mean –“

 

I punched him in the gut.

 

Killing intent – fail.

 

The Hero’s feet left the ground for the second time, now accompanied by most of the air he had left in his lungs. He came down onto his knees and vomited. The fairy, who had finally lost what little temper she had, screamed and flew unerringly for my face. I side-stepped and she flashed harmlessly by.

 

Rather than try to attack me again, she went for the Hero once she had managed to turn around. Faint glittering motes of healing magic drifted down from her and covered the Hero. After a few moments of the treatment, he was able to stand up again. The look on his face as he glared at me could have curdled milk.

 

Good.

 

“You… you…..” It did not seem that he could find the words he wanted to say.

 

“Attack,” I commanded.

 

There was no hesitation this time. The Hero reached behind himself and pulled loose the Hylian shield. He fumbled with it when attempting to buckle the strap around his arm. I attacked instead of waiting. There was nothing better than another punch to show him that he should have already had the shield in place when we left the cave. He managed to bring the shield up in time to intercept my attack, but it did no good as his hand was the only thing keeping it in place. My first strike knocked the shield askance and when my second came, it turned nearly ninety degrees in his grip. My own hand was able to secure a hold on the shield’s edge and yank it away at that point. It slid across the dirt and came to a stop well beyond the Hero’s reach.

 

Shield work – fail.

 

The Hero staggered back and reached for his sword again. It came out in a shining arc that would have terminated where my right shoulder was, quite literally disarming me. I was not about to let that happen. Yet again he was using his weapon with no thought, no skill. Just a simple overhead chop that a woodcutter would use to fill his supply of firewood. If I were immobilized, then perhaps it would be effective, but against a moving opponent?

 

I stepped _into_ the blow – and he had not been expecting that, if the flash of panic on his face was anything to go by – ducked beneath his upraised arm, grabbed his free hand when he tried to hit me, and drove a knee firmly into his groin. Having a fair idea of what would happen next, I side-stepped for the third time to avoid another round of vomit. The Master Sword hit the dirt as he lost his grip and fell to his knees once again.

 

Sword play – fail.

 

The fairy began healing him again and I allowed it. I did, however, take the precaution of kicking the Master Sword away from his hand. That proved unwise. Even though it was only a moment of contact and even though I had my boots on, I could still feel my foot blister as the sword’s powerful magic came to furious life when it sensed I was not its master. The stinging pain did not begin to fade after a few moments, as other injuries were prone to, and it caused me a moment of worry. A debilitating injury to my foot was not what I needed. I carefully shifted my weight to the afflicted appendage. Interestingly, the pain did not worsen. Perhaps it was only meant as a deterrent and did not actually cause injury? Well, I was likely fine then.

 

As it was, I only had an unpleasantly tingling foot, an unpleasantly buzzing fairy, and an unarmed, nauseous Hero. What would he do now?

 

“Attack,” I commanded for the third time.

 

As he stood up, I was pleasantly surprised to see him refrain from attacking me again. Instead, he simply stared at me for a few long moments. Good. He was thinking. I had wondered if he was capable of it.

 

The fairy was not idle either. She bobbed slowly around the Hero’s head and then zoomed to circle my own, though far beyond the reach of my arms. She was not, however, beyond my needles and I felt a brief urge to show her that before I squashed the impulse down.

 

She was watching me. He was watching me. I waited.

 

I saw the attack before it came. His muscles, pathetic as they were at that time, were still as visible as anything when they tensed for movement and that tensing told me everything I needed to know.

 

The slingshot and the boomerang were left behind in the Hero’s bag. Although I believed he could still make some use of them, they were now too small to be effective in combat. By the time he had adjusted his grip for the too-small items, his opportunity of attack would more than likely be lost. He knew that and I was not unable to admit he had shown wisdom there.

 

Some things from his past remained viable options, though; the bomb bag he carried his explosives in, the Deku sticks he had worn bundled against his back alongside the Master Sword, and finally, the Deku Nuts, one of which he was throwing my way.

 

I jumped. The magic that burst out of the small nuts had a very limited range, only about two feet in diameter from where the shell broke open, and once beyond that, I merely had to close my eyes to escape the blinding flash. The Hero opened his eyes to see me unfrozen and on the offensive once more.

 

“Link, dodge!” the fairy yelled, but to no avail. I slammed into him and knocked him to the ground. The bag of Deku Nuts spilled open and scattered its contents everywhere. The Hero started to rise, but failed when I planted a knee on his chest and put the tip of one of my knives against his cheek.

 

“Dead,” I said.

 

He was breathing so rapidly that he neared hyperventilation. His face was red and his cap was coming loose.

 

I was… _disappointed_ … but it appeared that we were done for a while.

 

I got up from his chest (accompanied by a sudden inrush of air from the Hero) and put my knife away. He growled when he had the air to do so and made a swipe for my boots with one hand. I stepped on it.

 

“Stop that,” I ordered. Above my head, the fairy yelled, “Hey!” and beneath my foot, the Hero spat, “No!”

 

I pressed down harder. “You are done for today. Calm down, gather your things, and catch your breath. You are –“

 

A high pitched whirring sound came from behind. I ducked, putting even more weight onto the Hero’s hand and causing him to yell. The fairy, still trapped in her mad rush for my head, flew past me in a glowing blue blur. She nearly hit the canyon wall before coming to a stop and turning around violently to face me.

 

“No he’s not!” the fairy yelled. “You haven’t done anything to help us except to get us out of the town. Everything since then has just been you beating him up over and over again! We don’t need that kind of help! Just point us toward Kakariko and go away!”

 

“You fail to understand the situation, even now. This boy was not even able to fight me for more than two minutes when I was holding back. If he were to go into Hyrule now and throw himself against the forces of Ganondorf, he would be slaughtered and this entire world doomed to misery. If that is what you seek, then by all means leave. However, please be aware that I will do _everything_ in my power to stop you.”

 

They had an idea of just what everything in my power was. It put a visible damper on their mutiny.

 

“Now, back inside,” I ordered as I stepped off of the Hero. “There are some things you need to know.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You should not be alive,” I said.

 

The Hero glared at me from beneath his messy hair.

 

“I found enough holes in your attacks to have killed you over a dozen times on a bad day. Now, here are the most important ones:

 

“The biggest issue is your temper. You kept getting angry when you could not hurt me and that had a poor effect on your judgment. It was only at the end that you stopped attacking me long enough to think out a plan, even if it was a failure.”

 

Yes, I was digging at him. If I had to spend months turning a clumsy fool into a sorcerer-slaying warrior, then I wanted him to know how much enthusiasm I had for that task.

 

“The second problem is your form. Have you _ever_ had any instruction with a sword?” I asked.

 

“I practiced a lot whenever I could,” the Hero answered, though it was more of a deflection than an answer.

 

“Not what I asked,” I responded. “I will take that as a no then. I assume the same is true for everything else you have?”

 

“I can use them _fine_ ,” the Hero spat. “I’m not usually this tired, or you would’ve been in big trouble.”

 

“And that brings us to the final problem,” I said. “Take off your tunic so I can have a look.”

 

The Hero was still glaring at me when he tugged the brown fabric over his head. Perhaps he thought it would be more effective through a filter. I do not know. The gray undershirt followed soon enough and then all three of us had a clear view of the Hero’s torso. It was scraped and bruised from the morning spar, but that was not what drew my attention.

 

From what I knew, the Hero had walked the length and width of Hyrule as a boy. The body I saw then was not that of an active person. Not an ounce of muscle could be seen and the skin was paler than that of a dead fish. All of this was new to the Hero evidently, if the way he sucked in his breath was anything to go by.

 

“I take it you had a bit more muscle when you last looked?” I asked, not entirely without amusement.

 

“What _is_ this?!” the Hero said, sounding offended and disgusted at the same time. “I was strong as a bear when I went into the Temple of Time.” He pinched a bit of skin and fat between his fingers, and stuck his tongue out at it.

 

“My best guess would be that whatever magic kept you alive for seven years had its limits,” I said, while prodding and poking the body in front of me (“Hey, that tickles!”). “You needed to be kept alive to fulfill your prophecy, so healthy was a natural follow-up on that, but _fit_ seems to have been overlooked. If I did not know any better, I would say you have never worked a day in your life nor been outside,” I added, looking at his pale skin.

 

“I thought he was just stressed,” the fairy commented. I did not bother correcting her, because I too had been following that line of thought for a while.

 

“No, that is not it,” I said. Another finger sent at his ribs made him scuttle away. “He simply looks like a man who has not seen the sun for seven years. He moves like a man who has not moved seven years. And what about you, fairy?”

 

“Eh?” She appeared caught off guard by that.

 

“You were asleep alongside him, if you will recall,” I reminded her. “Do you feel no ill effects from your slumber?”

 

She took a moment to think about it while the Hero quickly threw his clothes back on. I waited patiently, wanting her to give me a complete report. If it had affected her, I wanted to know how.

 

At length she said, “I don’t think so. I haven’t noticed myself getting any more tired than usual and my magic seems fine, if the healing charm I cast earlier was any proof.” The mention of the healing charm brought back the reminder of why it had been necessary. She buzzed at me angrily.

 

“And why are you being all calm and helpful now? Earlier you beat Link black and blue without a care in the world!”

 

“Yes and I will be doing it again sooner or later,” I admitted shamelessly.

 

She was going to go into another tirade, I could tell. I had no desire to listen to her ranting, so I cut her off before she could begin.

 

“As things stand now, he is not able to complete his mission. He tires after only a few minutes of fighting, he has lost most of his arsenal, what remains he has little idea of how to use, you are both unaware of what has transpired in the world, and most of the people who would have helped seven years ago are now either dead or in hiding. I do not mean to be disparaging when I tell you this,” I explained calmly, seeing the Hero and the fairy getting more and more upset with each word. “It is simply what the situation is. The moment you begin actively searching for the sacred temples and free them of evil, you will become the target of a man who fancies himself a god and has every reason to believe it. Unless you are prepared for every eventuality, and possibly even if you are, death will find you and Hyrule will continue to suffer under Ganondorf’s rule for as long as he lives, and possibly even after. This _must not_ happen,” I finished, stressing my last sentence.

 

He had redressed himself while I spoke. The look on his face had slowly changed from anger to something more placid. When I finished speaking he gave me his reply. Until he began speaking, I had not known I was waiting for one.

 

“Okay, I get it,” the Hero began. He waved a hand in my direction when I tried to speak up. “No, really, I do. It’s kind of like when I left the forest the first time, but worse. Nobody knows me or wants to help me, I don’t know what will try to kill me and I have to learn how to fight again. Ganondorf doesn’t have to hide what he’s doing now either. So, if I want to make things better, I need to be a lot more prepared than I am now. I didn’t even get one hit on you,” he finished ruefully.

 

“I plan on fixing that,” I said. “I am going to be accompanying you until Ganondorf is slain, but I cannot protect you the entire way. More to the point, I cannot use that sword,” I pointed at the legendary weapon on his back, “to cut off Ganondorf’s head. You can, or rather, you will be able to when I am done with you.”

 

“Do you know how to use a sword?” he asked. A valid question, I had to admit.

 

“I have had a bit of instruction,” I admitted. It was the truth. That it was several years ago and I had not taken up a shield at all since and sword work only a few times, I did not say. “I will be teaching you just the basics for now. Anything more difficult will have to wait.”

 

“Neat,” the Hero said with a smile. I wondered how long his good humor would last.

 

“One thing before we start, though,” he said.

 

?

 

“What?”

 

“ _Stop being mean_ ,” the Hero ordered sternly. “If you have to knock me down to teach me to dodge, that’s fine, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

 

That… seemed to be an oxymoron.

 

“You want me to hit you nicely?” I asked for clarification.

 

“I want you to explain what you’re doing and be nicer when you do it. No more insults and _don’t_ hit Navi. Ever.”

 

“Tell her to refrain from attacking me and I will.” “I’m right here you know!” the fairy said angrily.

 

The Hero jolted, evidently having been ignoring her. I had a feeling he had learned that skill early on.

 

“Okay, so, deal?”

 

Niceties would cost me nothing and, if they gained his further cooperation, could benefit me a great deal. Not such a terrible thing.

 

“Deal. Now, pick up your sword.” The Hero blanched.

 

“Eh? You don’t mean –“

 

“We’re resuming now.”


	4. Just A Kid 4 (Now)

Two days into our arrangement and we had not yet had another outburst like the one that occurred after our first spar.

 

True to my word, I had explained the purpose behind every attack I launched at the Hero. Every time I countered his own attacks, I would tell him how I had done so and how to prevent it from happening the next time. So long as I gave a reason for it, he never once complained no matter how many times I smashed his face into the dirt. If nothing else, he passed in determination and enthusiasm.

 

The fairy, too, learned day by day. Her magic was often the only thing that allowed the Hero to get back up for another round. She began taking to hovering around me and shouting out advice to the Hero. Most of it was useless. I quickly learned that she had no more actual combat experience than the Hero. The tricks I used to fool him worked on her more often than not. As these were training exercises meant to improve their combat capabilities, I felt no hesitation in flicking needles, Deku nuts, rocks, and occasionally one of my knives at her.

 

And no, this was not breaking the agreement with the Hero. He had told me to never _hit_ her. Letting her know with near misses that not all enemies would stand passively for her to analyze them was for her own good.

 

I had to explain that to him the first time, of course.

 

* * *

 

 

Blade work was the most important. If for any reason he lost his grip on the Master Sword, Hyrule may lose any chance of a future. If for any reason his attack failed to end a threat, the counter attack could destroy a country. Therefore, he must never grow weak; must never miss; must never hesitate.

 

I flicked rocks at his shoulders, his stomach, his knees, and his face; anywhere I felt like. His job was to bring the blade up and swat them away before they connected. If he failed, the next rock would be even smaller. The first day that passed, the exercise ended with my flinging pebbles at him. The second was only slightly better, and I owned it up to chance. However, to my surprise, it was not a fluke. Although progress was slow, the fact remained that he always improved during each session. Some days it was so faint I barely noticed, but he never even once did worse than he had the day before. Amazing, really.

 

Beyond coordination, these assaults were among those meant to teach him to strike reflexively. He needed to move without stopping to think about it, to let his eyes guide his hand without the brain interfering. Maybe he had been able to do so effectively before his seven year sleep, but that ability was no longer his. I knew how frantic a fight could be and I knew how valuable the ability to react accurately without needing time to consider was. Without this, he had no hope of success.

 

When the rock left my hand, a knife took its place. Some days it was just the one. On those days I would grapple with my free hand, pretended I had a shield he had to counter, slipped needles for throwing between my fingers, and introduced his eyes to the dirt I had grabbed when I bent low. I never gave him an easy opening and some days I did not give him one at all. The way he fought told me that he was used to circling his opponents, waiting for them to rush him or grow tired. Not a terrible strategy, but not one that he should use every single time, either. Sometimes you had to cut yourself a path.

 

Some days I held two knives. I would get in close, jabbing my blades into his skin when he was too slow to block or dodge (which was often) and telling him what he did wrong, how to fix it, and why it was a bad idea. I showed him why a blade such as the Master Sword was better suited to keeping opponents at a pace’s distance than up close, and how to kick and punch and smash with his shield to make the enemy retreat back to that distance.

 

There were times I made him leave the shield behind. With nothing to hide behind, he learned to use his blade as a guard. Then I made him pick the shield back up and learn to use it properly. If he ever even for a moment returned to his previous habit of simply hiding behind it, I went immediately for his knees and showed no mercy.

 

It was slow, painful work, but as the days passed, I felt my hope begin to return.

 

Perhaps he was not a lost cause.

 

* * *

 

 

“Have you ever used a bow?”

 

The Hero looked up at me from his work. No one had ever given him instruction on how to care for his gear and his previous maintenance had begun with sewing up rips and ended with brushing off any visible dirt. Now he knew to oil the leather, wipe the moisture off of the metal to prevent rust and sand down any rust that had begun to form. Anything else would have to wait until we had more tools to use.

 

“A bow? Naw, don’t think so,” the Hero said. “Arrowheads are really hard to make and they kill things easy besides. Great Deku Tree didn’t really like us playing with them.”

 

Great Deku…? Oh yes, the guardian spirit of the forest. It was supposed to look after the Kokiri.

 

“What about a throwing spear? A sling?”

 

“You mean, ‘do I have anything that I can use to fight from far away?’” he asked for me. “I had my slingshot and my boomerang, and that was about it. I’m down to my bombs now and, well, they explode. I don’t like using them in a fight if I can help it. Almost lost my face one time.”

 

Why did that not surprise me?

 

“…You’re getting a bow when we arrive at Kakariko,” I said after a moment. “Before that, I’m going to show exactly how to safely use explosives in and out of combat, which you should have learned before you ever picked a bomb up. Who exactly gave you your bombs?”

 

“Found ‘em,” the Hero said.

 

…What?

 

“What?”

 

“I found ‘em,” he said, blissfully unaware of my distress. “I’d gone into Dodongo’s Cavern to clear it out for the Gorons and I found a bag full of bombs in a storage chest. There were a lot of tunnels that had been blocked off with rocks and I needed to clear them, so I decided to take the bombs with me. The bomb flowers weren’t growing everywhere, so I needed another option and why are you staring at me like that?”

 

I had crouched down in front of the Hero. He stopped the circular motion of his hand over the shield to fully focus on me. I stared at his face, trying to see any evidence of the mind that I knew to be there and yet had so much trouble understanding.

 

“Hero, you simply found a bag of what you knew to be dangerous explosives and took it with you?”

 

“Well, yeah,” he said.

 

“Without any more idea of how to use them than what the bomb flowers had taught you, over a period of what I am guessing to be one or two days?”

 

“I knew how to –“

 

“You then proceeded to use them in a mine with no supervision.”

 

“Why would –“

 

“On tunnels that had collapsed previously and could very easily do so again.”

 

“ _They didn’t fall_ –“

 

“And without any idea that maybe you were liable to kill yourself before the monsters could.”

 

“ _I knew they were dangerous!_ ” he shouted. I was lucky the fairy had stepped outside to stretch her wings. She would have joined in with him.

 

Glaring at me heavily, the Hero kept on with his shouting. “I knew they were dangerous! I’m not that stupid! I saw them shatter boulders to little pieces, you think I didn’t know what they could do to me?! I always kept them away from fire, I put them down before I fought Dodongos, I tried my best to never knock them around; _I did everything I could to keep safe!_ I always take everything I can find, because I never know if I’ll need it or not and it’s worked out fine till now! I check things before I use them and the bombs, they weren’t cracked or crushed or anything! So yeah, I took them with me! And good thing I did, because that King Dodongo would have eaten me if I hadn’t made him eat the bombs!”

 

He finished his rant breathing heavily, but not as heavily as the last one. The week of training had begun improving his body’s strength already. Good.

 

“That was luck,” I said quietly. “You say you gather everything you can when you can? Fair enough, when you know how to check it over. But those bombs can be dangerous even if the casing is intact. Did you ever find out why they had been left behind in that chest? Maybe the Gorons did not have time to grab them and they were simply left sitting there. Or maybe the powder had been mixed incorrectly and they were awaiting proper disposal. Maybe they would have refused to burst when you needed them. Maybe the fuses were too short. Maybe they were incomplete and filled with nothing at all. How could you tell?”

 

“I couldn’t,” he said angrily. “And they still worked _fine_.”

 

He gathered his things and stomped off to continue his maintenance outside the cavern. I watched him go thoughtfully. Scavenging supplies was something I was very familiar with, but I knew how to inspect my finds. Only in the direst of need would I keep something I was not sure I could trust my mission to. The Hero had been a rupeeless wild child with no friends or family to supply him, so his habits could be explained as practicality in his eyes. But in mine? The Hero would need to know what he was grabbing before he grabbed it while I was around.

 

It was one thing to lose him to a stray arrow. It would be quite another to see his own finds do him in.

 

* * *

 

 

I had pleasantly little to teach him in regards to tracking and concealment. Apparently the Kokiri had made games out of following rabbits and deer, seeing who could go unnoticed the longest. The only problem was taking what he knew and adapting it to an environment that was outside of the forest. We had to leave the bolt hole to venture deeper into the canyon where there was more room to work with. Soon he knew how to look for the cracks in the rock walls that led to hiding places and how to erase any sign of his presence from the dust and rock.

 

In regards to urban camouflage, he had nothing to show. As we were confined to the canyon for the foreseeable future by our circumstances, I had no decent way to instruct him. I could only tell him what was most obvious about his appearance and character, and tell him what a proper Hylian would do or wear in place of that. Until we arrived in Kakariko, it would have to do. I could instruct him better when we had an urban landscape to practice in.

 

Code words and phrases were easy enough to pass on. The trouble came in having him repeat them later. I would have to remind him over and over that ‘we need cold water now’ actually meant we are about to be ambushed, ‘harp’ meant Zelda, ‘wise men’ meant the Sages, and ‘criminal’ meant Ganondorf.

 

I would like to extend credit to Impa for having the wisdom to apply that codename to the Black King even before the coup.

 

There were others. Over a hundred, and bear in mind that these were only the ones I needed him to know. I myself learned the full range of Sheik’ah code speak, more than one thousand instances of applying one word or phrase to another meaning, before I was fourteen. He hardly needed to act as though it was torture. I even allowed him to learn it in Hylian and not Sheik’ah.

 

And, of course, I had to teach him history.

 

* * *

 

 

“So, what happened after I left?”

 

I stopped my stirring of the ladle. The soup would have to wait, it seemed.

 

“I assume you mean after you were locked away in the Sacred Realm?”

 

The Hero nodded. “When Ganondorf grabbed the Triforce and came back, what happened then?”

 

I wondered how much of it he needed to hear. I could have spent all night simply going over the slaughter in the market, but that would have only incited him or caused him to feel guilt. Best to skip the gory details and give the bare minimum, I decided. I turned back to the soup. I had no desire to ruin a good meal through inattention.

 

“We still are not sure precisely sure when Ganondorf entered the Sacred Realm, so we have no way of knowing how long it took him to obtain the Triforce of Power and return. I suppose it does not matter whether he needed time to use its power or if he simply knew how to use it once he touched it. In either case, he returned from the Temple of Time with a weapon of unbelievable destruction that he immediately set out using against the civilian populace and military of Hyrule.

 

“Hyrule Castle and the town below were the first targets. People by the gate managed to evacuate in time, but everyone deeper into the area was not so lucky. Most of the survivors fled to Kakariko and established new homes there. Of the soldiers, a few rejoined the garrisons stationed in and around Hyrule Field, but most decided it was better to give up the sword.

 

“Over the next few weeks, the Gerudo tribe and the remains of the Hylian forces clashed several times, with the Hylians coming out worse for the most part. However, with the promise of reinforcement from the Gorons, they were managing to hold on. While this was happening, Ganondorf, for whatever reason, had yet to emerge from the old castle. He was converting it to what you saw upon leaving the temple. After it was finished, he decided to take to the field.

 

“The last official battle of the armed forces occurred some three months after the opening of the Door of Time. It began with Goron troops joining up with Hylian cavalry in an attempt to strike from the east and west of the Gerudo main camp, which succeeded, and ended with Ganondorf calling down the wrath of Din upon all of the field. Nothing survived.

 

“After that, there were a few more fights. Some mages attempted to confront him at the castle, there were lightning raids against the Gerudo war parties, and more events of the like. They have stopped since. The only real organized resistance that remains is strictly an underground movement. They take only covert action.

 

“After crushing the last of the army, Ganondorf sent word throughout all of Hyrule that he was now sovereign lord by right of conquest. If any wished to challenge him for the throne, they were of course welcome to do so. Few took up the offer.

 

“Beyond that, his declarations were few. He said in no uncertain terms that he expected the Gorons and Zora to come to heel as well. King Darunia refused and shut the doors of Death Mountain to any Gerudo. Unless the policy has changed since I found you, any of Ganondorf’s ilk who trespass there are subject to immediate execution. I have also heard of famine again, as Dodongos are once again beneath the mountain. Aside from that, the Gorons have been quiet.

 

“The Zora were much the same. Their King did not refuse to continue purifying Hyrule’s waters, as that would have harmed those who were innocent, but the gateway of Zora’s Domain has been sealed for a long time against any who are not of water. There is no way for them to tell who is a friend or who is seeking to do them harm in Ganondorf’s name.

 

“In a broader sense, evil things had begun to stir. Perhaps it is due to the Sacred Realm being opened, or perhaps is it an effect of a holy relic being sullied by the hands of a madman, or perhaps it is something he does deliberately. I do not know. What I do know is that old legends that should not be seen in this age are living again. The dead were ripping themselves from Hyrule Field seven years ago. A terrible thing, but the war was only ten years past and not all of the fallen had received funeral rites. It could be imagined. Now even the spirits of those whose bodies have long since rotted away are finding reason to appear.

 

“Monsters breed like rabbits and wander down to towns and villages in broad daylight. In the graveyard of Kakariko there is always a watch on the old tombstones, because nearly every night something tries to claw free from its grave. Old curses thought banished are beginning to show their effects.

 

“Sickness is becoming a problem for everyone and we have few left who can treat it. Any old soldier or mercenary hides or sells their weapons, because they fear being sold as a troublemaker to the Gerudo who pass through. Contact between villages is dying down, because so many are afraid to travel.”

 

I stopped. I had wandered from the past to the present, and become melancholy. It would do no good.

 

“My apologies. This has no –“

 

“Why are you apologizing?”

 

I looked at him.

 

His face was curiously blank. I had known the Hero for only a little over ten days by then, but he had never been hard to read until that moment. This new uncertainty was not welcome to me.

 

“I was the one who let him do all of this.”

 

Ah.

 

There was the guilt I had feared.

 

(I made a reminder to myself to never tell him about the details of oppression.)

 

“It was not your fault through malice,” I responded, turning back to the pot. “You had what appeared to be a quick and simple solution to a terrible problem, and you chose to take it. Given that you were about ten years old and had little to no help, it was likely the best thing you could have done at the time.”

 

“That makes it better?!” he asked incredulously.

 

“No,” I answered honestly. “You did something that had catastrophic results for more people than anyone cares to count. However, few people know that and you are also part of the solution for that catastrophe.”

 

I pulled the soup off of the fire.

 

“And if the solution works out, I doubt anyone will remember you as anything but what you must be.”

 

I poured the steaming liquid into a bowl and handed it to him.

 

“A hero of legend.”

 

* * *

  

Another day, another test.

 

(Except not quite the same.)

 

Begin.

 

Let him come to me. Sword is raised, shield is raised, fewer openings than before. Good.

 

Dodge. Be liquid, avoid the strike before it descends.

 

Circle around him and –

 

!

 

Duck!

 

The sword passes overhead.

 

Grab the arm, pull, turn, _heave_!

 

He flies and something grabs my collar.

 

He falls. A tug. I fall.

 

We land in the dirt. My knife is at his neck. His shield at my forehead.

 

He smiles.

 

“One for me.”


	5. Just A Kid 5 (Now)

Kakariko Village had changed much over the years.

What had begun as a secondary, visible, fortified village and base for my people had changed to a barely used outpost and then to a bustling Hylian village, and finally to the last refuge of the desperate multitudes fleeing the horrors of Ganondorf’s cruelty for a supposedly safe haven. I could have told them they were wasting their time. Kakariko had stayed untouched for so long because there were informants in one of every ten houses, and those just the ones I knew about. Ganondorf never raised his hideous hand there because he never needed to stir the pot to see what came up.

I knew that the town’s gates were under constant surveillance, if not guard. While I could have tried to disguise myself and the Hero to get us through, I decided it was better not to tempt fate. I still had no idea as to the state of affairs regarding the Hero’s status and how widely his description was being spread, if at all. The lack of attack as we left Castle Town behind still bothered me.

I instead took us through the canyon, up the steep bottom of Death Mountain and into Kakariko at night. Once inside the gates, the hard part is usually over. If you are in, you are one of them.

The canyon was a quiet, peaceful journey in the daylight. Nothing hindered us. With little water to be found in the area, few animals lived there and as a result, few monsters chose to make them their hunting grounds. The undead were a slight problem, but my spells kept them away as we slept. The closer we came to Death Mountain, the more dangerous it became. Sentient life was still far away, as only the most agile Gerudo could navigate the steep slopes with any ease and only the most paranoid Gerudo would even bother. I took us in at night anyway. Besides potential watchers, the Tektites were most active during daylight hours. Although their movements tended to create an easily noticeable scratching noise against the rough rock ground, one failure to notice said sound could result in a large, fanged monster dropping in on us from the air. Thankfully, that never happened. The Tektites we did encounter were avoided or killed without incident. The Hero seemed to take great enthusiasm in chopping them to pieces. When I asked him why, he smiled and told me that the first time he had climbed Death Mountain he had been chased back down the trail by a pack of three Tektites.

I briefly considered telling him that Tektites likely did not bother grieving for fallen comrades, but decided his actions were more a kind of catharsis than vengeance and left it alone.

After spending a two nights slowly inching our way up Death Mountain’s lower side, we found ourselves overlooking the dip that led down to Kakariko. The village was nestled in a small natural valley, hemmed in on all sides by Death Mountain at the north and smaller peaks to the south, east and west. Only one path led in or out of the valley, the same small trail that my ancestors had discovered centuries ago. It was incredibly narrow, only wide enough for four people to walk abreast at its largest point until it opened into the town. No army could manage to travel it and expect anything less than massive losses. There was nowhere to retreat, nowhere to hide, nowhere to rest; just a seventeen mile walk uphill from Hyrule Field with bolt holes chiseled into the cliffs above and traps littering the ground below. No army had ever taken Kakariko, either when or after it was a Sheik’ah dwelling. No army had ever even managed to reach it.

Not from Hyrule Field, at least.

After declaring Kakariko a Hylian town, the king removed the west gate and replaced it with a sign proclaiming the town’s name. The north gate, a massive thing formed of iron bars each three inches in diameter that were topped off with spikes, remained.

There was a very good reason for that and monsters from Death Mountain were only a part of it.

We entered Kakariko on the third night, quietly sliding and scrambling down the rocky mountain to reach the valley. The fairy was hidden in the Hero’s hat to conceal her glow. Most of the village was sleeping, or at least inside. Aside from the accusations of mischief that could be levied against anyone found out late at night, there were some rather compelling reasons to be behind a locked door come nightfall when so close to a cemetery and _that_ cemetery in particular. It was only vaguely comforting to know that the villagers kept watch on it until sunrise. I did not know if any of them had actually preformed an exorcism before.

Although our training regime had… _somewhat_ improved the Hero’s physique, he was still lagging when we finally touched down onto the grass-covered valley floor. Thanks to prior planning, the safe house was nearby. A few quiet steps through darkened paths and I was knocking lightly on the wooden door. After a minute of silence, more than likely while the occupant armed themselves, a quiet voice asked, “Who knocks at this hour?”

“My companion and I seek shelter for the night,” I answered. “If you would be so kind as to let us in, we can tell you a story for our board.”

“Agreeable,” the speaker said. “If you mean no harm or deception, step inside.”

The bolt on the door audibly slid back. With a quiet creak that nonetheless sounded far too loud for my ears, the heavy wooden door eased open into a dark house. Behind me, the Hero started to come forward, then stopped abruptly when I lifted my hand, palm flat and fingers up, in the signal that I had told him meant ‘wait’. My free hand drifted down to my waist where I kept my heavier knives. Holding onto a hilt, I carefully walked through the door.

I was not ambushed with violence.

Merely unpleasant surprise.

“Lazde,” I said flatly, quickly scanning the dark room hoping and failing to find Impa. “Why are you here?”

She smiled, her perfect white teeth bright in the shadows. She knew better than to walk around in uniform without a face covering of some kind. Either she was so excited it had completely slipped her mind or it was a deliberate choice. I could think which one would be worse.

“Impa had a problem to take care of,” Lazde said cheerfully. “So, I’m here to greet you instead. Why? Did you miss her?”

My greatest annoyance with this girl was that she thought I appreciated her jokes.

“No. Pull up your mask. We have a guest.”

“Oh, you can’t mean it. He’s a friend and we – “

“He _is not_ our friend,” I said forcefully. That had to be made clear immediately. “You’ve never met him before. He has no right to see your face.”

(“Hello? Can I come in yet?”)

“Just do as I say,” I ordered and she frowned, petulant, but she pulled her dark woolen mask up over her face as I turned back to the Hero waiting outside. I pulled the door open wider and waved him in.

“It’s safe,” I said quietly as he entered. “We simply have a different housemate than I had originally thought.”

“Who was supposed to be here?” he asked as he crossed the threshold.

“Impa, my leader,” I replied.

Lazde lit the lamp as the door shut behind the Hero. The warm light gave definition to what the shadows only hinted at. I knew what the Hero saw – a young woman of our own age, a half a head shorter than I, with dark hair pulled into a tail high on her head. She wore men’s clothing in dark colors, with a short sword on her belt. The mask covered her face from the nose down, but her skin was fair and her eyes a bright red.

“She had some business in the graveyard tonight,” Lazde explained. “We set watchers at the gate to keep monsters from getting into the town, but it’s better to prevent it from happening at all when we can. Hello, I am Lazde. Pleased to meet you,” she said happily.

Too happily.

She was not trying very hard to maintain her distance.

“I’m Link,” the Hero said. He was already smiling at her. I thought I should be concerned. “And this is Navi,” he said as he yanked the green cap off of his head. The rest of his old clothes were piled into a stinking wad at the bottom of his bag after he had refused to abandon them, but the cap had remained mostly clean and on his head. If one had to be trapped on the Hero’s person, then that was likely the best place for it. That said, the fairy clearly had not appreciated her confinement. She raced around the room several times, likely stretching her wings, before alighting on the end table nearby.

“Finally! Nobody had better tell me to get back in that hat for at least a day!”

Fair enough. I had planned to give the Hero a few days of rest.

“Navi, right? I’m Lazde. How nice to meet you.” Lazde bowed slightly at the fairy, something which made me wince inside.

The fairy looked Lazde up and down. I wished I could have seen her facial expression to get a clue as to what she was thinking. Link may not have recognized anything, but the fairy was an altogether more observant creature.

Not observant enough, however. After a few moments, she simply shrugged her wings, a tiny chiming sound coming from them. “I am Navi. Thank you for inviting us inside. We’ve been sleeping in a cave for weeks.”

I have mentioned before how the fairy should be more cautious, more aware of things, have I not? This was the only instance I can recall where I was simultaneously angry that she could not see through an illusion _right under her nose_ and relieved for the very same reason. Lazde should only ever be thought of as Lazde to those two. Even though I did not think the Hero or fairy would intentionally bring her harm, it was still quite possible for unintentional harm to occur.

While they kept chatting, I drifted over to the nearest bed in the two room house and began checking for weapons. There was the usual knife under the pillow, but she had also included a few smoke bombs in the gap between bed and night table, as well as a whip in the drawer. While I was pleased she had added more than one weapon, I was curious about the whip. Had she been reading the old archives for instruction? I had never taught her and I do not believe any of the others had either.

Satisfied that she had been reasonable as to her own safety as she slept, I continued examining the house. I heard the Hero asking after me from behind and heard Lazde’s answer; that I was checking over the house’s defenses. It was an unimportant conversation and I ignored it, though my ears were still listening in for anything that might begin to compromise Lazde. She did fine among strangers, but when in the company of those she trusted, her walls came down alarmingly fast.

The trapdoor in the roof that led outside was still invisible unless you were aware of it, the hinges still well-oiled and soundless. So too was the second trapdoor that led down to the crawlspace between floor and foundation of the house. The windows were still shuttered with painted iron, the locks on them heavy and strong. You would never think they were anything but wood to look at them. The panel that hid the secret niche with weapons and supplies was still unknowable from the rest of the walls and the trove within it was well stocked and maintained. Satisfied after that, I replaced it and moved to the table in the center of the room. Lazde has done well here, I thought.

“You hid a lot of stuff in here,” the Hero muttered. He had taken the chair by the shuttered window.

“We only have so many places to hide,” Lazde explained. She had not sat down yet, busying herself with the pump at the wall to draw up water. “A lot of the old houses got taken over by refugees after the occupation started and we can’t use them anymore. There are a few places around town where we stash things in case of an emergency. If you climb up the tree you see upon first entering the village, you can always find a bit of food, medicine and a few throwing stars, for instance. But places where we can actually sit down, plan, rest, practice, store things and such are getting harder to come by.”

No exaggeration, that. We had to rotate among the safe houses to avoid drawing any suspicion to one without compromising the individual who it actually belonged to. Unoccupied houses were, as Lazde said, swiftly claimed. Someone had to be seen living in each of our buildings or we ran the risk of losing it. This one was, I believed, the property of a stonemason who had joined on with us some three years ago. He had left for a few days to spend some time with his daughter or at least that was the excuse he gave his neighbors. We had that long until he returned and Lazde faded back into the shadows of Kakariko. The Hero and I had to be gone by then, as well.

“Has there been any trouble in town?” I asked as I took my seat. I let myself exit the Void after a day of hard exertion and refrained from wincing at the sudden awareness of pain. It was already fading, but my feet throbbed and there was a multitude of scrapes on my hands and arms from climbing the rock slopes. Nothing that would not heal quickly.

“Not much,” Lazde replied. She finished filling the jug with water and carefully grabbed three cups with her free hand, pinching them together with her fingers. She joined us at the table and began pouring cold water into the cups. “The last arrest was almost a month ago – not one of ours – and the cemetery was quiet until tonight. There have been no new bounties posted nor any turned in.”

“None?” I asked sharply. “Nothing about a young man in green in the last few weeks?”

“No.” Lazde shook her head. Her red eyes were confused as she stared down at her cup. “I was listening for anything that even hinted about you three, believe me, but there was nothing. Nobody, none of my informants or the townspeople or the Gerudo who came to town, no one said anything about a Sheik’ah or a Kokiri with a Fae companion, or even a Hylian with a Fae. It was more than a little worrying to be honest.”

‘Worrying’ was putting it lightly.

There was no way, no _possible_ way, that Ganondorf had missed the Hero’s arrival. He was a skilled mage, a holder of a Triforce piece, and was sitting a mere few miles from the Temple of Time when it occurred to boot. So why the silence? Why were we allowed to leave the town unmolested? Why did he not instruct his agents to apprehend or kill the Hero? Even if he did not know him to be the Hero of Time (possible, I supposed. Rauru certainly had not been in contact with Ganondorf), a mage meddling with the Sacred Realm was cause for alarm, was it not?

Not so to Ganondorf, it would seem.

He was letting the Hero roam freely. There was one very obvious reason as to why he would do that and I very deliberately refused to look at Lazde as I thought it through.

The Triforce of Wisdom had given Her Highness powers beyond any mage living before she was eleven years old. That knowledge and ability allowed her to remain hidden from enemy spells designed to seek her out. If Ganondorf had been watching Her Highness during his days in Hyrule Castle (and there was a plethora of evidence to suggest that he had been), then he might very well have known she was friends with a boy who broke into the castle. Connecting the little boy in green who vanished in the Sacred Realm to the young man in green who appeared from the Sacred Realm was not an impossible task. And would it not be natural for that young man to seek out old friends?

In short, perhaps he was using the Hero and the fairy to hunt down the Princess.  

He could be watching us right now, I mused. The house was warded against scrying for the moment, but that meant little to nothing against a Triforce piece. Was he simply waiting for us to mention the Princess? Better to nip that in the bud.

“Maybe we simply had the favor of the Goddesses that night,” I said idly, while my foot reached over to Lazde’s. The tip of my boot began tapping against her own.

B-E-I-N-G-W-A-T-C-H-E-D.

She smiled softly. “That’s a nice thought. Maybe we haven’t been abandoned on this world after all.” She turned back to the Hero, who had drained his cup and was rolling it back and forth across the table between his hands. “Was your journey here rough? Sheik is a reliable sort of person, but he can be rather harsh at times.”

Down below, her own foot began twitching.

D-A-N-G-E-R-C-O-M-I-N-G?

“I am no more harsh than needs be,” I said calmly, whilst the Hero began to list his evidence to the contrary. The fairy flew up from her perch by the door and hovered over the table, adding her voice to his own.

W-A-T-C-H-I-N-G-M-A-Y-B-E-N-O-T-A-L-K-Z-E-L-D-A.

“Okay,” Lazde said as the Hero finished his rant, but she was looking at me when she said it. Then she turned to him and smiled that blinding smile that dimpled her cheeks and scrunched up her eyes. Even beneath her mask, you could still see it somehow. “He was more than a little rude, I admit. I hope you do not look down on Impa or myself as a result.”

“No, you’re okay,” the Hero said swiftly. “I like Impa, too. It’s this jerk who needs to be nicer.” He glared at me.

I felt so hurt, really.

“We won’t stay here for very long,” I warned. “Just long enough to rest, restock and figure out where to go next. Keep your bag full of essentials, because we may not have much time to prepare for our departure.”       

“Why’s that?”

“Sometimes our safe houses get discovered,” Lazde said quietly. “It does not happen very often, but when it does we have to clear out in a hurry.”

“This one should be safe,” I said. “No one has been lurking nearby, right?” I turned my head to Lazde.

She shook her own. “No, just the neighbors and there is no one else in their homes. Like Sheik says, we should be fine.”

“Good,” the fairy chirps. Her voice is too high-pitched to describe it any other way. “I need a rest after all that traveling.”

The Hero stared down at her tiny glowing form in disbelief. “Navi, you rode around on me whenever you got tired. What are talking about?”

“Well, yes, but it was still annoying,” the fairy responds.

I ignored the rest of the conversation, if it could be called that. It degenerated into the fairy and the Hero sniping at each other over who was ‘daintier’ and should be left behind. Asinine, the whole thing. The Hero was coming if I had to drag him and the fairy would not be left without him.

I went to the nearest bed and stripped off my boots. My clothes remained on, dirty as they were. Although I had no doubt Lazde had assured the safety of the house to the best of her ability, past experience had taught me that sometimes bad accidents just happen. I did not want to have to flee a house without my clothes and I probably would not have time to dress. My weapons (or as many as I dared remove, at least) went onto the side table, under my pillow and beneath the bed. It always felt strange after I removed them. They were a part of me now.

Lazde was up and moving towards the cupboards, probably for food. I was not terribly hungry and desired rest more than nourishment. The Hero could eat his fill and I would get my own later.

For the moment, I slept.


	6. Just A Kid 6 (Now)

Dawn came swiftly and I woke.

It was only the brightening light that disturbed me. Even through the dark curtains, the room was beginning to fill with the morning sun’s rays. In their own beds, Lazde and the Hero slept on blissfully. The fairy was a faint glow on the Hero’s nightstand. She had pulled a scarf up around her as both blanket and pillow.

What was removed the night before, I refitted with due care in less conspicuous clothes. After a stop at the pump for a drink of water, I consumed the remains of the previous night’s dinner on the table. Lazde had left the bread and cheese out, correctly guessing I would be in a hurry when I woke. Speaking of, she had woken from her own slumber as I moved about the tiny house. Clearly in no hurry to leave her bed, she watched me with half closed eyes.

“Where are you off to today?” she asked.

“The graveyard,” I replied. “After that, perhaps Impa’s house.”

“Are you worried that she might be in trouble?”

“No.” I felt nothing, the Void serene and still within my mind. “However, if at all possible, I would like any and all trouble brewing in the village to be headed off immediately until we leave. A house to house search would be inconvenient.”

“Cold as ever,” she sighed. Disappointment, anger and… worry? I did not understand her.

“…I’ll take my leave now,” I said, pushing the now empty bread board away from me. The blindfold I had hung around my neck came up to wrap around my eyes. Impa was one of the lucky Sheik’ah who had eyes so dark a red that they could pass as brown at a casual glance. Lazde and I were not so fortunate. Our bright red eyes had to be hidden from all view or everyone would see.

“Be careful,” Lazde whispered.

“I usually am,” I answered as I opened the door.

 

* * *

 

 

A simple trick to earn coins from the sympathetic many years before had been to feign some disfigurement. An arm twisted up and hidden behind your back could be passed off as a limb lost in the civil war. For those less willing to endure discomfort, a ratty blindfold was a quick and easy way of claiming blindness. Most of them did not last long, doing something to slip up and expose their lie. The ones who had mastered it were willing to share tips for a handful of rupees. The most important one? Do not give yourself enough light to see. Do not use a cloth thin enough to see though or allow for gaps to peer through. You must be blind in truth. If someone decides to test you by throwing something at you or pretending to kick you or actually kick you, your best bet to keeping up the ruse is to never see it coming.

It had been a game as a child, back when there was still another Kakariko to call home and I still had a family. We would take turns wrapping old clothes around our heads and whoever got furthest before losing their way would win. What I did after leaving Lazde, the Hero and the fairy behind was no game, however. The blindfold covering my eyes and the makeup that indicated some horrible, long ago wound beneath it were all that stood between me and recognition as a Sheik’ah.

However much we deserved to be marked as outsiders, I cursed the decision that led the Goddesses to give us these eyes.

I had no permanent identity in this village. I was gone so often and for so long that if I did have a permanent face here, the neighbors would begin to wonder where I had disappeared to. It was risky, what I did. No matter how few Gerudo came this way, there were always informants and other traitors who sought to enforce Ganondorf’s will and earn rewards by exposing his enemies. Although I doubted any ordinary bounty hunter could catch me easily, the risk still remained. I wanted to get my business over with quickly.

I made for the graveyard as the village stirred. No one called out to me in greeting. The sight of my walking stick and blindfold likely scared them off. I’ve found that a cripple makes healthy people strangely uncomfortable by presence alone. Those who did see me going to the graveyard likely thought me only visiting a dead relative. I lingered by the archway leading into the graveyard for a few minutes, just to be certain no one was following me. When I was reasonably satisfied that I was alone, I followed the path up.

Kakariko Graveyard predates the village itself. Long before the village or the stronghold were here, the caverns that would become the Shadow Temple had a history as a breeding ground for the restless dead. Necromancers flocked to the site, befouling it even further with their black arts. When the Sheik’ah were charged with reigning in the horde of undead, monsters, and demons that had overrun the land, the simplest method was to corral all the negative energy of Hyrule into one location. Given that this one was already tainted, it only made sense to use it. The Shadow Temple was our first accomplishment of note. The graveyard that came after it was originally built solely as a way of guarding the royal families’ remains, but over time lesser nobles began to occupy the graves as well. By my own time, even common soldiers who had distinguished themselves falling in battle earned a resting place there.

It was the soldier section that I reached first. The step stones that formed the path leading up the mountain side took me passed knights slain in the early stages of Ganondorf’s coup, in the short days when they still had people who cared to claim their bodies and ensure they were buried properly. These days, it was rare to have a warrior buried with proper ceremony. Most tended to gloss over martial accomplishments, not wanting to draw attention from Gerudo. Scattered here and there between the larger graves were small wooden markers, indicating the illegal graves of ordinary folks. Usually, bodies were buried by their home, but if the deceased had no land to lay them to rest on, or if the gravedigger feared spectral reprisals, it was growing more and more common that they would find an empty plot in the graveyard and leave the body therein. It was an easy way of obtaining sanctified ground for a burial, although the protections had been failing heavily as of late.

Daylight kept the ghosts in their graves, but I could feel an ominous chill from certain graves as I stepped passed them. I had little doubt that was where the Poe who plagued the village at night were resting. Why had Impa not exercised them? Unless the graveyard was being watched at night, she had no reason to let them wander.

I paced up and down the rows, checking each of them in turn. I knew the graveyard path by heart and did not lose my way. The tomb of the royal family lay at the very back, just in front of the entrance to the Shadow Temple. I knelt in front of the memorial stone and gently traced my fingers over the engraved stone. It was not the words I wanted to feel, though. I reached deeper, feeling the cold hum of my people’s spells buried in the stone. The seal had not been breached. The last time the tomb had been opened, it had been a necromancer of some kind who struck when the guard was away. He had returned to find the entrance wide open and the bodies reanimated, fallen kings and queens turned Redead. The one consolation to be found was that the necromancer had seemed unable to control his creations, as many of them had already been put down. The rest had been exorcised quickly, all the bodies returned to their sarcophagi and resealed.

I pulled away, satisfied that my past liege lords and ladies did not need assistance. I was equally satisfied that Impa was not there. My last hope of finding her quickly was at her home, but that was not likely. She had not used it for years and for good reason. If there was not a watch on it, I would be amazed.

Still, she had left a few discreet ways of getting inside. The tunnel –

Footsteps.

I tensed, automatically going over every weapon I carried on me. The blindfold would have to go if a fight broke out, but who had followed me? I was reasonably sure no one had followed me through the village and the only people who knew I was here….

…Ah.

I relaxed slightly, straining my ears for… yes, the rhythmic _clink-clank_ of a scabbard hitting a shield with each step.

“Hey Sheik, why are you… _whoa,_ what did you do to your face?”

“It is make-up,” I said quietly. I still was not fully convinced we were alone. “Try to keep your voice down.”

“Will we wake the dead?” He… sounded serious, actually. Did the Kokiri not have ghosts?

“No,” I answered. “But I don’t want people hearing what we say.”

“But there’s no one here. Dampé’s still sleeping and I didn’t see anyone following me,” the Hero went on.

“Just because you can’t see someone does not mean there is no one nearby,” I retorted. “I’ve surely taught you that much. And Dampé the grave keeper is not sleeping, he is dead.”

Sweet silence. If those were the only words out of him until it was time to leave, I would be blessed.

“Wait, _what?!_ ”

Of course I was not.

“Dampé _died?!_ When? How?” the Hero moaned.

The Hero had known the grave keeper? How? To the best of my knowledge, the Hero would have had no reason to visit a graveyard seven years ago.

“There was consumption epidemic about four years ago. Dampé was one of those taken by it,” I said.

“Consumption epidemic?”

…Right, Kokiri.

“Do you know what sickness is?”

“Yeah, sometimes animals die before they’re old and not ‘cause something hunted them. They just get weaker and die, but they do get better sometimes.”

Only animals then? Interesting.

“The Kokiri do not get sick?” I asked.

“Nah, the Great Deku Tree kept it away from us. I guess people outside the forest do?”

“Yes,” I explained. I stood up and began walking back towards the village. There was nothing left to do in the graveyard. “Consumption is a type of sickness that makes a person cough up bloody mucus, lose weight and eventually die unless they are very lucky. One person who has it can cause it to spread to other people they interact with. A sick person shakes hands with a healthy person, the disease gets on the healthy person’s hands and from there everything the healthy person touches. Sooner or later, they get sick too and so does whoever touched what they touched. An epidemic is when a very, very large amount of people are sick at the same time with the same illness.”

“But Dampé said hardly anybody visited him. How could he have gotten sick?”

“At a guess? From the bodies he buried. As the grave digger and grave keeper for the graveyard, it was his job to collect the dead and bring them here to be buried if the family could not. All those bodies dead of disease… small wonder he got sick.”

We were nearly at the entrance again when the Hero stopped walking. I heard his footsteps trail off behind me. I stopped and turned to face him. A bad give away if anyone was watching, I realized quickly. Ah well, too late.

“What is wrong now?”

“…Give me a minute. I want to check out Dampé’s house.”

?

“Why?” I asked, honestly perplexed.

“Just because,” was his well thought out answer.

I could have stayed at the entrance, but the thought of him poking around a dead man’s house beyond my reach bothered me. With my luck, he would cut his hand on a rusty nail and get lock-joint.

Restraining my sigh, I followed him.

The air turned stuffy as I passed through the slanted doorway. After a moment’s thought, I removed the blindfold. I was reasonably certain no one capable of seeing through walls was nearby. The shack, which had never been a prime example of architecture, had fallen rapidly into disrepair after the grave keeper’s death. Trailing ivy had burst through the walls and ceiling, stretching over everything. The bed frame had collapsed, the blankets twisted into a nest for some small creature. Dust coated everything thickly and there was a faint scent of rot from some moldering food stored away in the narrow cupboard.

The Hero was at the small, rickety desk set beneath the shack’s one window. He was reading an open journal that lay on the desk, still somewhat intact after all the years. I peered around his shoulder to see for myself, though I recalled the words well enough.

> _When I dug a hole, I found a treasure that stretches – BOING! And shrinks – BOING! It’s so fun, I’ll never give it to anybody!_

And further below that, in a faint hand:

> _Whoever reads this, please enter my grave. I will let you have my stretching, shrinking keepsake. I’m waiting for you._

Why would a man who knew the dangers of the undead better than most make such a ridiculous request? That request had baffled me and not only because I had never discovered what treasure he meant.

“Do you know where Dampé was buried?”

**_No._ **

“Hero, we are _not_ desecrating a grave,” I said in no uncertain terms.

“Desecrating?” He said, looking confused. But even as he did, he was moving towards the door with a purpose.

I grabbed him before he could get outside. “It means, to dirty something that should be held in respect. A person’s grave is their final resting spot. In more practical terms, it is where their unruly spirit lays if they have not passed on. Disturb the grave, disturb the spirit. You have seen a Poe before, yes? They are one of the results of things like that.”

He still looked confused. I was growing irritated and forced the feeling away into the Void. What about my words was not getting through to him?

“Buuuu _uuuut_ he invited us,” the Hero said, pointing towards the diary. “It isn’t a disturbance if they ask for it, right?”

There was a lifetime of ritual knowledge and necromantic teachings that I longed to hiss into his ears. I refrained.

“It isn’t if you ask nicely, they accept, no one interferes with black magic, it isn’t a certain night of the year and a dozen other things that could very easily turn a benign spirit into a violent one. Hero, there is no point to this. We are not doing it.”

Too late, I realized my mistake. He hated being told what to do. I had learned that in the canyon, but there he had been reliant on me. Now we were Kakariko Village, familiar territory for him, and he felt more assured in defying me.

As I feared, his blue eyes narrowed and his shoulders straightened.

“I’m finding Dampé’s grave and you can go back to the village!” the Hero shouted.

He yanked his arm away – I had half of a second to consider whether or not I should force him still, then decided the potential negative consequences to his already low opinion of me did not need to be tested – and stomped out of the rotting shack. I followed after him, neatly sorting through the various feelings I was experiencing and dropping them into the Void to be forgotten.

He walked in the wrong direction. The noble section was our first stop. He paced up and down the massive, pale gravestones. I was only reasonably certain he could read. He could very well have been looking for a picture of Dampé etched into the stone.

We went downhill from there. The Hero walked every row, examined every gravestone. None of them was the one he sought. We had nearly reached the memorial stone in the front of the graveyard when he finally gave up.

“Where is he?!” the Hero shouted.

A tiny explosion of blue-white light flew out from beneath the Hero’s cap. “Can’t a fairy get any sleep around here?!”

I had been hoping she was still in the house.

“Navi, I can’t find Dampé’s grave. Help me look,” the Hero asked.

This was getting out of hand. If it get the fairy out of sight and the Hero inside faster….

“He is over here,” I said, pointing towards the tree line.

I turned to walk off the path.

“…You knew where he was?” the Hero asked, his voice disbelieving.

“Of course,” I said. “I was the one who buried him.”


	7. Death And Cold (Then)

Thirteen years old.

I have seen more dead bodies in the last few weeks than all the rest of my life thus far combined. All pale, all wasted away. Their families fear to touch them and they pile in the streets. Some are braver, taking them to the graveyard for purification and consecrated ground to seal them in. A rare few donate precious time and energy to clear some corpses unknown to them for the sake of the town. I am one of them.

I fear no sickness born of nature. It takes something special to weaken a Sheik’ah. The smell of sickness, of rot, of death is omnipresent. I cannot remember anything else. I know something else exists, as I know I once had a sibling, a mother and a father, cousins, kin. Much like all those things, I cannot remember a thing about it. I know a flower has a smell. I know bread has a smell. I cannot recall what they are like.

That is what I fear.

The death of my memory. I forget more and more what it was like before all of this. Before I knew death, before Ganondorf’s reign. I am forgetting the person I was. That boy was lazy and spoiled, but I still miss him.

That boy could never have done this.

That boy could never have hauled a sledge filled with dead bodies (three men, a women and a child, all already stripped) through icy paths between houses and up the incline to the graveyard. That boy would have collapsed long ago, exhausted beyond motion.

I am not that boy.

The graveyard is quiet, a heavy blanket of snow turning everything to a pristine white. The silence is beyond belief. Even in the dead of winter, even in the village that lays choking beneath consumption’s hand, there is noise. Not here. Nothing lives here.

Not even the grave keeper.

I find him in his bed, after entering to see why he does not come out. He has blood on his chin, on his neck, on his blanket. Was it the cold or the sickness that killed him? I remember the autopsy lessons – find the cause of death - but this man deserves better. The other bodies can be burned in a pinch, but doing so to the grave keeper seems… wrong, somehow. This man looked after the honored dead, a task not at all dissimilar from my own. He was not Sheik’ah, but….

…I will make an effort.

(This sentimentality will bite me in the ass many years down the road.)

“Please enter my grave,” he wrote. I walk to the small clearing in the trees, just before the mountain begins to slope upward again. Dampé’s predecessors are buried in a line from tree to tree. At the very end of the grave arrangement is a sharply dug hole. The edges are crisp and it is deep. The trees have kept the worst of the snow away from it. A headstone, carved from cheap slate, simply reads ‘Dampé’.

Had he felt the consumption creeping up on this and done it as a last act? Or had this been here for years now, proof of a very morbid practicality? I believe the second one. It was something a Sheik’ah would do.

The bodies on the sledge burn slow, even with a splash of oil to help the process. Their light helps me fill in the grave, smooth the soil until the mound is flat. The moon is full; a good omen for a clean soul to pass into the afterlife. My spells seal his grave, trapping whatever may remain in the soil.

After, I return to the safe house. Grei hands me potato and chicken soup, and I remember what warmth is.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of what I've written so far. I'll add new chapters sooner or later.


	8. Just a Kid 7 (Now)

The gravestone was worn slightly, the carving gone smooth and dirt gathered in the grooves. Grass had grown over what I remembered as loose dirt and the tree was green with leaves, not dead and white from snow.

“This is where Dampé is?” the Hero asked (what I hope was) rhetorically.

“This is where his body is, yes,” I answered. “He should have moved on to the afterlife by now.”

“How come he’s buried off to the side like this?”

“Look around,” I gestured. “This area is dedicated to the graveyard keepers. Dampé had a place here waiting for him from the day he accepted the job. I imagine they wanted to avoid being bothered by passerby.”

Sweet silence, though only for a few moments. Then….

“Nobody misses him, do they?”

I was confused, not at the question but at why he felt the need to ask. Dampé had clearly lived alone.

“He told me what flowers and food were for. I mean, why people always brought them and left them on the graves,” the Hero continued. “He said it was partly for the dead people, so they’d have something to take with them when they passed on to the next place, and partly for the people left behind so they could feel like their friend wasn’t gone yet. There were a few gifts back in the main graveyard, but there’s nothing here. His grave looks pretty dirty compared to the rest, too.”

“He had no one, so far as I know.”

“That’s terrible,” he muttered. Sorrow was plain on his face and I wanted to snap at him to wipe that look off his face, but the feeling was fleeting and vanished into the Void. “I was alone for a long time, before Saria and Navi. But even then, there were people who would have noticed if I never left my house. Dampé didn’t even have that.”

“It was years ago. What could you have done?”

“Told him he was my friend and that I would bring him presents when he died,” the Hero said without thought.

Innocence, grief, stupidity – what was going on through his head?

Then the ground gave way beneath us.

I’ve no idea as to why the grave had not fallen in sooner if it had been dug above the tunnels that riddled this area. Compared to the weight of all the dirt, two young men were not that heavy, surely. Nevertheless, fall we did.

The ground shuddered suddenly, sagging in a long oval with the two of us in the center. I kept my feet and the Hero did as well, though not easily. There was only a single moment between the initial drop and then a bit of stability, a traitorous hope that I could get my feet loose from the dip in the earth and onto solid ground. I tried to jump; there was no grace or planning in it. It was only a matter of two or so feet and I could have done that on my hands. I _could_ have, if the ground I was kicking off from had been stable.

Instead it sank again and then disappeared entirely.

The Hero shouted in alarm and surprise, his arms reaching for a grip. My right hand did the same, my left reaching for the back of his tunic. I grabbed fabric and earth both, but only one remained solid in my hands. As for my precarious grasp on the edge of the newly reopened grave, I had perhaps a quarter of a second to contemplate how I was to pull the both of us out before the edge crumbled to loose earth under my palm and we both fell into the dark.

The trick to landing when you do not know when you are going to land is to relax utterly.

Do not stiffen your muscles. You will want to brace yourself, but do not.

Bend your knees ever so slightly to absorb the impact of your weight.

Land on your feet. This is the smallest point of impact and will prevent something more valuable, like your torso, from taking the brunt of the fall.

Once your feet have touched the ground, try to disperse the rest of the motion by either falling sideways or rolling forward. Do not go backward.

If you follow these instructions and if the Goddesses yet have a use for your life, you will likely live.

I fell for one heartbeat, felt the solid stone of a cave floor beneath my boots and tumbled into a roll before coming to my feet. No harm done.

“ _Nyidicht!_ ”

I turned around.

The Hero had landed on his feet as I had, but rather than rolling forward he had simply allowed the impact to travel up his legs. Did he not know what to do when falling? I would have to address that.

“Hey!”

And the fairy was back.

The morning sunlight illuminated much of the tunnel we had landed in, but the fairy’s glow was still welcomed. The tunnels of the necromancers were cramped, filthy, crumbling things that seemed to absorb ambient light. Even my eyes had difficulty with them.

“Link, are you okay?!” The fairy seemed to be beside herself with worry.

“Y-yeah, fine,” the Hero grunted out. He gingerly took a step forward, then another and seemed to shake off the pain that assailed him. We had not fallen very far all things considered. The opening was only ten or so feet above us.

“Why’d the ground fall through?” the Hero wondered aloud.

“Shifting the dirt above a tunnel to dig a grave would have weakened the ceiling. Then we came along and stood on top of it as well. The strain must have been too much to hold, especially as it had already collapsed once,” I reported idly. That I had to explain the concept of weight and structural damage was more than a bit baffling to me. Was that not something you simply knew by experience?

“How do you know it fell in before?” the fairy asked, darting in front of my face.

Annoying. Her light was ruining my dark sight. “I do not see Dampé’s body anywhere, do you?”

There was a brief pause as the sentence filtered through the minds of those two and reached whatever passed for comprehension with them. Confusion and worry filled the Hero’s face, and I knew what the next words out of his mouth were going to be even before he opened it.

“Do not bother asking to go looking for it,” I cut him off. “It likely happened years ago and we’d have no way of recognizing his bones even if we managed to come across them in whatever animal’s lair it was taken to.”

If it even _was_ an animal, I thought.  

There were far worse things creeping through this place and far worse fates for a corpse than to be some scavenger’s meal.

“Um, Sheik?” the Hero said, still wearing that confused look on his face. “That’s not what I was gonna ask. Does anyone live down here?”

?

He was not looking at me, I realized belatedly. He was looking _behind_ me.

I quickly turned and saw something that had no place being down there – light. It was not from our little circle of sunlight – which I was loathe to leave – but the orange-red light of a fire. Only living people would need fire to see by and there was no good reason for any of them to be down there.

Which meant necromancers.

Lovely.

“Go back to the house,” I ordered. I had brought enough weapons. I had purification salt and plenty of silver. It was better to do it then, at the time of daylight. The sun setting would only strengthen an undead. “I will be there momentarily.”

“What, wait, where are you going?” the Hero hissed.

I turned to look back at him. “There are probably necromancers – very bad magic users – up ahead. I am going to stop them before they can do anything bad to the graveyard.”

“Then I should go with you. They might have Dampé’s body,” he insisted.

“Too dangerous,” I snapped. “I’ve only just gotten you to some semblance of competency. You are nowhere near ready to fight a necromancer in their own lair.”

“Neither are you. Did you even bring anything to fight with today?”

(My arsenal at that time: purifying salt, six bags. Silver, two knives and one wire. Poison, powdered moonflower petals. Throwing knives, one dozen. Heavy knives, three. Garroting wire, two. Deku nuts, ten. Brass knuckles, sewn inside of my gloves. Disappointing, but what can you expect? I had expected that all the danger of the graveyard would sleep by day.)

“I am armed enough and I will make do,” I answered levelly, doing my best to impart the same tone and face that I had used during training to keep him in line. “Go. Back. To. The. Village.”

No, it was futile. The Hero only pulled his lips back, baring his teeth at me in a grimace. Or maybe he meant to snarl? The Kokiri were a mystery and he had been one of them not so long ago. How did they express anger?

“Idiot!” he shouted. “Not unless you do too!”

The usual way, then. Never mind.

“Excuse me,” the fairy said, but I ignored her. I had one fool to convince as it was. Listening to the arguments of a second one would likely incite me further.

“What part of this do you not comprehend?” I asked icily. “You are still not ready for something like this. There will be dead bodies hauling themselves up to their feet solely to rend the flesh from your bones with their teeth, spirits conjured to yank your soul from your body; have you ever fought something like that before?”

“I’ve fought the dead in Hyrule Field and these things called ReDead in dark places,” the Hero insisted. “I can fight a necromancer and its friends too.”

“Do you even know what the word necromancer means?”

“Um, you two? Excuse me, but there’s this – “

“It’s something that wants to kill us, what else matters? It’ll be smart or stupid, it’ll use its claws or weapons or magic, and we should kill it quick so it can’t call for help. What else matters?”

“One, it is a magic using person who binds the dead against their will. Two, the last time I fought one it took myself, Impa and two other Sheik’ah to kill them. Three, you are not nearly as skilled as they were. Fourth – “

“Well, let’s just go get Impa and Lazde then. We’ll have four – “

“No,” I snapped. The thought of Lazde anywhere close to a necromancer was enough to make my palms itch for my knives.

“Then what do you - !”

“HEY! LISTEN!”

The fairy suddenly zoomed between our faces, her cringe inducing light enough to make the both of us back away from each other.

I glared at the annoying little fae. “What do you think you are doing?” I asked lowly.

“The light’s coming this way!” she yelled.

?!

I spun around on my heel, but even before I finished I could see that the fairy spoke true. The light was changing.

“Get up the wall,” I hissed. My right hand went for a heavy knife, my left for a bag of purifying salt. If I could get them with the salt first, that would slow down any necromancy they could cast. The knife would be enough to finish things after that. Probably.

“I said _no_ ,” the Hero murmured. I had a fleeting, cathartic moment wherein I imagined punching him in the face and simply throwing him up into the daylight. I was not actually strong enough to do that, sadly. The Hero stepped up to place himself beside me and I saw with a small shock that the Master Sword was in his left hand, his shield on his right. It had only been a few moments and I had heard nothing. Either the coming threat had rattled me more than I believed (unlikely) or my training had actually produced a small result.

I did not believe him to be ready for a battle with black magic in the dark, however. Better for me to strike first and try to end it before he got close. The firelight was near enough to let us hear the crackling of the flames then. The orange glow of the fire cast our shadows back until the sunlight reached down to cancel them out. I saw the shadow of the one who approached as well. Tall and wide, awkwardly hunched over at the shoulders – was it a Redead? Had it been sent ahead as a diversion?

I would find out soon. The torch was nearly around the corner when I took off at a sprint. Behind me the Hero and the fae both began yelling, but I ignored them. I had to get the advantage of surprise. The enemy was likely able to see the daylight from the hole, but it was possible they were still focused on the firelight. If I could just get them with the salt…!

I swung around the corner sharply, letting myself slide low to the earth, and saw a spirit – not a Redead or a necromancer, just a restless soul – floating above me with a handful of crackling flames in its grip. Cursing internally, I realized I was aiming at the wrong angle. I had been intending to scatter the salt on the legs and at the feet of the shambling horror and instead found myself with a floating ghost. I stood as quickly as I could, my left arm rising with equal speed to toss the salt bag straight up. Wailing, the ghost darted forward, instinctively fleeing the purifying mineral. It rushed past me and I turned to chase, another bag of salt falling into my free hand as I sheathed my knife with the other.

I rounded the corner again, chasing after my prey, and found the Hero only halfway to me with the ghost flying right for him. The fairy was dashing ahead to shine her light on the approaching threat.

I thought that he was going to die. That he would raise the Master Sword and fight it off. That he would run. Nothing close to what he actually did.

The Hero of Time lowered his weapon and tilted his head at the unholy spirit that was flying towards him.

“Dampé?”

I hurled the bag of salt at the ghost, the drawstring untied to let it spill out. The mineral must have reached the spirit because it wailed loudly and flickered in and out of my vision. If I could force it into the sunlight it would be further weakened and I could finish the exorcism with just a few words. Why was the Hero just standing there? Even if he did not know how to dispel a ghost, he could at the very least have gotten out of my way.

Instead, he was yelling at me. He actually reached out to grab me. “Stop, you’re – “

My now free hands latched onto his wrist and tunic, yanking him forward. A quick twist and pull found the Hero tumbling to the ground. Now, where was –

\- !!!

He had grabbed me again. I fell alongside him, his shield hand wrapped firmly around my tunic. Damn him!

“Stop, it’s Dampé!”

“That doesn’t matter!” I yelled back, fury breaking through the Void inside me. This fool was going to get us both killed if he did not –

“Young man. Excuse me?”

?

I stopped pulling at the Hero’s wrist and turned my head to see the spirit hovering above us. It stared down at the two of us with something resembling anticipation, which did nothing to ease my mind.

“Are you fast on your feet?”

Alarm growing.

“Yeah, I can run fast,” the Hero answered blithely from the tunnel floor. “Why?”

 _Why_ did he insist on talking to it?

The spirit cackled and said, “I may not look like it, but I’m confident in my speed! Let’s have a race!”

Wait, what?

“Follow me if you dare!”

The Hero laughed. “Okay!”

**_NO!_ **

“Absolutely not!” I shouted at the same time as the fairy yelled, “Why would you agree?!”

He was on his feet and running after the ghost faster than I would have believed if I had not seen it. Where had this energy been during our training sessions? I lurched forward, trying and failing to grab him. He had sheathed the Master Sword and was halfway to unbuckling his shield before I caught up to him.

“Stop!” I yelled. “We do not know where it is going! This is probably a trap!”

“No, it isn’t!” he yelled back. “Dampé invited us into his grave and this must be why! He wants a race!”

“Link, this is stupid, you have to stop!” the fairy wailed.

But he did not. The Hero, all of his equipment stored on his back once more by then, was running as fast as he could after the spirit of the grave keeper and I could only follow him. Dragging him back to the hole would be far too time consuming in a dangerous environment and that was ignoring the fact that I had no way of forcing him to go up it. It seemed I had to follow this potentially lethal stupidity to its natural end.

The spirit led us deeper into the tunnels. The light from our impromptu entrance was swiftly left behind us and the handful of fire in the spirit’s palm, as well as the fairy’s light, were all that served to show us the way. I had spent some time in such places before and I was reasonably sure of my ability to see ahead, but the Hero had no such skill. We had only been running for about ten seconds before he first banged into the side of the tunnel as it curved to the left.

“Are you all right?” the spirit called out. Why did it care?

“I’m fine, it’s just hard to see!” the Hero replied.

“Oh,” the spirit said, sounding fairly surprised. It had been dead for some years by then, so I suppose forgetting what mortal sight was like would not be out of the question. “Here you are then.”

Whereupon it threw a handful of eldritch flame to the tunnel floor directly ahead of the Hero.

He was going far too fast to stop in time. The fairy screamed, “Link, jump!” as I only began to shout my instructions. Fortunately, the fairy had had a far longer time to imprint her command over him and he responded to the order with alacrity. The Hero let out one of his wordless war cries and threw himself up and over the flames, rolling to his feet after clearing them.

“Don’t set me on fire, Dampé!” the Hero yelled, clearly angry. For one brief moment, I entertained the hope that he would give the race up as a fool’s whim, but no. He kept running after the spirit that had just tried to set him aflame.

The ghost only laughed in response and kept flinging fire down, a trail marker that was far more hazardous than helpful. We passed twin square pillars, lit by purple fire from a source I could not readily identify. I would have to come back and investigate it later. If it was just the ghost, fine and well. A simple exorcism would take care of things. If it was something else, well….

We continued the chase, our ethereal guide taking us through an ancient portcullis that slammed down behind us. Well, that answered the question of whether or not we would be backtracking to the hole after this. Would I be able to guide us out on my own? I could only hope so. Most of my exploration had been near the Shadow Temple and the tombs of the royals. I only had a vague idea of the tunnels we were in then.

Another ball of fire succeeded in scorching the right leg of the Hero’s trousers and the soles of my boots as I jumped over it. It was quite frustrating. Every time we began gaining on the ghost, it would throw down more fire to impede us.

“Navi, go on ahead and tell us what’s coming,” the Hero said. His voice was markedly quieter than his last few outbursts and I turned to look more fully at him. His face was turning red, enough so to see even in the poor light we had. I wondered how tired he already felt.

“All right!” the fairy acquiesced with enthusiasm. She relished the chance to be useful, clearly.

The tiny ball of blue light that marked her form buzzed ahead to rush past the ghost. If our third member shouting instructions back to us bothered it, the ghost gave us no sign.

“Stairs and a cavern ahead!”

Indeed. A set of crudely carved stone steps led down to a natural cavern with several large rock formations reaching up from the ground. The ghost floated nimbly between them, whilst the Hero and I were forced to ricochet off the sides when we failed to turn quite sharply enough (although I suffered this less by far). Then it was another tunnel, with the fairy warning us of another portcullis that was already rattling in its frame. We made it through with only a few seconds to spare before it crashed shut behind us.

Ahead then were two massive pillars of rock carved from top to bottom with script. I could make it out as Hylian as we ran passed it, but only a fragmented understanding of what it actually said came to me. There was too little time to study. What little I saw concerned the number of enemies slain and the sons the person had left behind, which convinced me that this was likely an old, forgotten tomb entrance and the pillars were the grave epitaph to the one interred there. More than likely nothing to be worried over.

More tunnels then. Cramped and cold, save for the brief bursts of heat from the spirit’s fire. The fairy kept ahead, shouting that there was nothing to be seen as she followed alongside the ghost. The Hero was flagging badly by then, gasping for air and tomato red in the face. I was ahead of him and he showed no signs of catching up to me.

“There’s a cavern! It has a path leading uphill and another portcullis at the end!” the fairy shouted and only a few moments later, we burst into the large open space after her. I could hear water rushing at the bottom of the steep drop in front of me, one of the Lethe offshoots no doubt. That river ran deep. To my left, the path did indeed curve up and around the cavern wall to stop at a large entryway framed by more torches. The ghost, being unencumbered by gravity, merely drifted up to the door. The Hero and I had to make do with more mundane means.

“Do you want to stop?” I called back, a perverse part of me feeling no small amount of satisfaction at how uncomfortable he was looking.

“Nooo _ooo_ ~,” the Hero moaned through his teeth. I started running up the incline, the Hero lagging behind me. The spirit having taken another route to the door meant that our path was blissfully free of fire and I reached the door in what I felt was fairly good time. I stood just outside its opening, waiting for the Hero to catch up. As much time and effort as this fool venture had cost, I was not going to risk being separated from him by a gate weighing several tons.

“Tick tock,” the spirit said from his spot above an old wooden chest. It sat in the center of a raised dais in the room beyond. That the spirit had stopped moving was odd. Was this the end of the race then? And there was a time limit on how long the door would remain open or something along those lines, if its ‘tick tock’ comment was to be believed.

“Hurry up, Hero,” I called. He was only just then reaching the crest of the rise, where the floor leveled out into a straight platform. I could see the spirit tapping its fingers against its wrist in the corner of my eye and guessed we did not have much time remaining. As much as the last few minutes had irritated me, the thought of going through all of it for nothing was slightly worse. The chest indicated that the spirit actually did have some form of material possession it wanted to pass on and I had learned long ago to grasp any gain with both hands. As the Hero stumbled towards the door, I reached out and grabbed him.

I managed to yank him though the doorway just as the locks in the portcullis above us released. We were sent tumbling to the floor when the impact jarred us off balance, though I maintain it was my grip on the Hero that did more to bring me down.

“The time of this race was one minute, nine seconds!” the spirit announced proudly. I honestly did not have one ounce of care as to how fast we had completed its ridiculous race, only that we find a way out of the tunnels now that it was done. The Hero felt differently.

“I… told… you… I… can… run… fast….”

He was close to collapsing again even as he struggled up to his feet. He was staring up at the spirit expectantly, no doubt wondering what his prize would be. Well and good for him, but where were we going from there? I could faintly see an alcove in the back of the room, but it only ended in two large stone blocks adorned with the symbol of time.

“Hehehe, young man…. You were very quick to be able to keep up with me! Hehehe!” It gestured grandly to the chest beneath its hovering feet.

“As a reward, I’m going to give you my treasure! It’s called the Hookshot! Its spring-loaded chain will pull you to any spot where its hook sticks! Doesn’t that sound cool? I’m sure it will help you!”

 _That_ got my attention. Hookshots were rare and valuable equipment. How in the world had Dampé managed to get one by digging a hole in the ground? Even if it were buried with its owner, it would have been buried _with its owner_. The only way he could have obtained it was by robbing a grave. Abruptly, I realized one possible reason why the spirit had not yet moved on – it knew what punishment awaited those who tampered with the sacred dead.

Breathing heavily, the Hero staggered up the few steps to the chest and leaned against it. I was close behind him. I did not want something to lean on, but I still had good reason to distrust the ghost and I wanted to keep near the Hero until it was either vanquished or left on its own. I was keenly aware of my four remaining bags of salt and limited silver supply.

“Hey… Dampé?” the Hero said haltingly as he gasped for air. “Do you… remember me?”

That seemed to confuse the spirit. It cocked its head at the Hero and peered at him closely. “Should I?”

The Hero took one more deep breath and then straightened up. He pushed his golden hair behind his ears and stared the spirit in its eyes. “I’m Link and she’s Navi.” He indicated the fairy, who obligingly hovered closer to him. “We played your digging game seven years ago, remember?”

…Digging game?

The ghost froze for a moment and then laughed. “Yes, yes, the forest boy and the fairy! I remember you now! It has been a long time. Where were you?”

“Sleeping mostly,” the fairy answered. “We only woke up a few weeks ago.”

“Well good morning to you then! I live here now so come back again sometime. I’ll give you something cool! One more thing! Be careful on your way back! Hehehe….”

“All right Dampé,” the Hero said easily. “I’ll bring you something nice for your grave next time, too.”

“Cool! And who’s your friend here?”

It was the fairy and Hero’s mutual dislike of me that had prevented me from being introduced with them. In hindsight, a good thing. My name was not exactly Hylian, after all, and I did not want the spirit knowing what I was.

“My name is Rau,” I said politely. “Pleased to meet you. May I enquire as to how we get out of here?” I kept my tone light and easy, but in truth I was struggling. I had to maintain eye contact with it and it took every ounce of my concentration to simply uphold the vague ‘do not notice me’ compulsion. Mind magic was tricky at the best of times for me with the living; the dead were an entirely different kind of headache. However, I could not have that thing realizing what I was. I still wore my beggar garb and the salt was something any superstitious person could carry with them in a graveyard. I still had a chance to avoid recognition.

(The Hero opened his mouth and the fairy swiftly bonked him on the cheek. He immediately closed it.)

“Oh, two ways,” the spirit grinned. “You can take the long way back,” it gestured at the portcullis, which opened with a shriek of rusted metal, “or you could try moving those blocks. I think it leads up to the surface.”

“Thank you,” I said. My eyes were beginning to burn from my lack of blinking, but I ignored it. It was not the first time I had had to do this. “Goodbye now.” I prayed the spirit would take the hint and leave.

Fortunately the Three seemed to be favoring me that day. With one last cackle, the ghost vanished and we were left in the dim cavern with only the fairy’s light.

I sighed in quiet relief as my eyes were finally able to close. “Hero, open the chest to claim your prize and let us be off.”

Looking at me oddly, no doubt wondering why I had given a false name, but did as he was told (for once). The fairy drifted closer and seemed to consider sitting on my shoulder as she sometimes did with the Hero, but decided against it at last. A wise decision.

“You know, you’re a jerk of the biggest magnitude, but you generally have a decent reason for why you put Link through all the horrible stuff you think up. So, why did you lie to Dampé?”

“Kind’ve curious myself,” the Hero called to us as he reached into the chest.

I quickly debated telling them all I knew and believed. I just as quickly decided against it. The Hero and fairy clearly considered the spirit to be a friend. Even _if_ they agreed with my logic and duties, I could not count on them to follow through on what they could perceive as violence against it.

A half lie then.

“The spirit seemed friendly enough, but I doubt it knew I was a Sheik’ah,” I said. “Part of our duties include quelling restless souls such as it, something I doubt it would have taken kindly to. Even if I have no intention of doing so now, the possibility that I could would likely have agitated it.”

“But he was looking right – “ the fairy began, only to be cut off by the Hero’s triumphant, “Hah! Navi, look at this!”

The Hero held in his hands a triangular bar of metal, the handle no doubt, attached to a round launching mechanism. A coil of gleaming chain, remarkably well maintained considering, lay beneath a wedge of sharpened metal.

“Lovely. We’re leaving now,” I said and turned away to the portcullis gate.

“Uh, Sheik, there is a quicker way,” the Hero said behind me. I turned to face him and he jerked his outstretched thumb over his shoulder to the blue blocks in the alcove.

“I can make the blocks disappear. All I need to do is play the Song of Time.”

?

“You’ve… done this before?” I asked, but even as I spoke I knew that was impossible. He had gained the song from a memory Princess Zelda had left behind in the ocarina and then immediately proceeded to the Temple of Time. Ever since that day, he had either been in slumber or with me.

“Well, no. But the symbols are the same!” he said, as though that were the be-all, end-all for rituals.

I sighed at his ignorance. “Hero, it does not work that way.”

Undeterred, he walked up to the blocks, pulled out the Ocarina of Time and began playing.

The fairy hummed thoughtfully next to me. “I don’t know. The magic on the Door of Time and the magic on the blocks feel awfully similar.”

“That would imply that the same magic that went into making the door to the Sacred Realm went into making a set of blue blocks in some unknown tunnels. Why in the world would - “

The last notes of the song faded away, as did the blocks. A vast cylinder of golden light descended from above to swallow them and they were gone in a mere moment.

The Hero looked very smug when he turned back to face me.

…My day was done. I was going back to the village, finding Impa and reporting all of this. Then the exorcism. Then bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the Hookshot has been acquired! A few little tasks to take care of and then they're off to the Forest Temple.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wondering for a while just who the Sheikah were. This is my result to build a better picture of them, as well as wondering what Ganondorf's reign must have been like.


End file.
